I found an old case and power supply in the garbage (maybe thrown out because of a bad power supply?). I tested the pc before I changed anything and it powered up fine. I decided to take out the motherboard and all the parts and replace them with better parts I had in another old case (I wanted to do this because the old case I had didn't have good air ventilation). I mounted the new motherboard sucessfully and installed the hardrive and pci cards. I hooked up the power and added a case fan to it. The pc booted up normaly and everything was working fine. I restarted and shut down the pc several times when installing drivers and it was still working fine. I decided to turn off the pc and open the pc again. I didn't like how the case fan's wire was in front of the cpu fan so i unpulgged the cpu fan and plugged it in a different 3 pin slot. I plugged in the case fan to where the cpu fan use to be plugged in. After I closed the case and tried to turn on the pc, nothing happened. I tried putting the cpu fan back in the slot it was in and the case fan back to where it was plugged in, but it didn't fix the problem. I unplugged the power supply from the motherboard and replugged it in, but it still won't work. I decided to test the motherboard with a different power supply and when I hooked it up and tried to turn on the pc, it was working. I tried using the broken power supply again, but it still didn't work. I tested the power supply in another motherboard but it still didn't work. Is it possible that I destroyed the power supply? I'm hopeing it was faulty before I made the change to the pc. The reason why I wont use the power supply that was working because it doesn't fit in the case. The older power supply is still working fine and has been working fine for about a year. This one has more wattage than the other one that worked. The power supply the case came with was 200 watts and the one that still is working with the computer has 110 watts. I find it strange how the pc functions perfectly under 110watts while the hardware in the pc requires more watts. This setup has a Geforce fx 5200 pci, 768mb ram (4sticks), 2 pentium 3s (both 1ghz), a nic card and a wireless lan card. Also, do you think duct tape is strong enough to hold a power supply? (A temporary solution until I get a new psu)

Hey Fenix,

Welcome to PCHF. We have a great group of techs here, and a few really amazing hardware gurus. I am reasonably sure that we can get you an answer.

All signs point to the PSU being dead. Chances are it was on it's way out anyway, it doesn't sound as if you did anything extraordinary that would have caused it's demise.

It does sound as tho you would benefit from purchasing a new PSU. I would want the power too.

As far as the duct tape, strong enough, yes. The right thing to put into a computer? I'm not sure about that. I think we need a buy in from one of the hardware gurus.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Thank you for replying
I guess it would be a good idea to buy a new psu. Someone in another forum told me that I may have overloaded the psu, but that didn't make sense to me because this one was 200 watts while the one that is currently working is 110 watts. Also, I don't understand how my pc functions perfectly normal under 110 watts. I play games on it for hours and it works fine. I used the psu calculator and it gave me a recommended psu of 260 watts(I added up some things myself because this pc has 2 cpus). One thing happened recently though. When I was using remote desktop on that pc for about 30min, the pc randomly froze and the mouse wouldn't move. 2 seconds later it responds again then after a second it would freeze again. Even after I closed remote desktop it was still doing that. It kept repeating this so I was forced to shut down the pc. After I turned it back on it was fine, but my main question is why did this happen? Thanks again for replying.

Hi Fenix,

I would definitely go buy that PSU. It sounds as if you are having intermitent power issues, or possibly overheating. Both of these can cause permanent damage if they are not dealt with.

Let us know what you decide to get.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

200 W is a REALLY minimal power-supply by todays' standards to begin with... and if you found it-- it was probably dying in the 1st place. I would make the investment before you fry other components... like the motherboard or processor --or both.

200watt PSU you can't even buy anymore, and the thing with PSU's is every year, they drop 5% of their capasity. So given that this is a fairly old unit already...it would definatly be the case of overloading.