On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:04:59 -0500, Cyde Weys wrote:

Last night, in the middle of a game, my computer just went dead and
refused to boot up. I think the problem may be the power supply (450W,
made by "Rhycom" if you've ever heard of them). I've removed the power
supply from the case and tried plugging it in and nothing happens. I
just want to confirm my theory that the power supply is dead: regular
power supplies, when disconnected from everything but power, should
still at least whir up their fans, right? Or does the power supply need
ot be attached to the mobo for the fans to work (in which case it may
not be my power supply that's dead?)

Thanks a lot for the help.

P.S. And no, I'm not stupid, I made sure the switch was on the "on"
position and the circuit set to 110V but still, nothing happened.

Ummm, i recommend you break your policy about opening it, and open it.

Check the fan, see if it's siezed... IIRC they used crap
sleeve-bearing fans. It's a junk power supply, but, LOL, you could
probably fix it by replacing the fan and the output capacitors... I
can't be sure that's the problem, but it's by far the most common
failure point on those generics.

To address your question, a power supply needs a load, at least on
it's 5V lead... some have this load integrated as a power resistor,
actually almost all do these days, but who knows what gets cut from
the design when they start minimizing the design cost. In any case,
attaching a hard drive is enough, then when you short the PS_ON, green
wire to ground, it should work, if it will. Note that if it's failed,
the output may be bad, you don't want to be attaching a "good" hard
drive for this test.