Power Supply upgrade issues

[Jannae]

My parents power supply blew out on them last week, and i decided to replace it for them. I like to think of myself as pretty computer savvy... but i have no idea what i did wrong, and i'm hoping you guys can help me.

My dad built his own PC 2 years ago, and here are the specs:
ABIT BE6 440 BX UDMA Motherboard (specs )
Intel Pentium III 550MHz (Slot chip)
PC100 160 Mb SDRAM
3DFX VOODOO 3 2000 16mb AGP
Deer 300W power supply - model DR-A300ATX
Input 115/230V, 7A/4A (current), 60/50 Hz (Freq)

The power supply that I got for them is a:
PowerUP Switching power supply, model LC-A350ATX
Input 115/230V, 8/4A (current), 60/50Hz (Freq)

The power turns on just fine, and the computer will boot, and get past the "Windows 98" screen. When it gets to the part where the desktop should appear, the screen goes black, and the HDD light on the case goes solid (not flashing anymore), and stays on. The power button on the case is now useless, even when you hold it down for awhile. To turn it off, you have to flip the switch on the PSU, or physically unplug the computer.

The differences I notice between the PSUs are:
- the 350W one has 3 plugs to go to the motherboard, the 300W only has one plug.
- the current differences you can see above
- the 350W one is indicated as being a "switching" PSU, and as far as i can tell, the 300W is not.

Any suggestions?? or ideas for help?

Thanks so much!

 

[rettahc]

Well you're probably not gonna want to hear this, but a few months back my sister had some heat issues with her system so she decided to put in another fan and it caused her power supply to burn out. Anyway for the next month her system keeps randomly rebooting. :blink: Turns out the power supply took the motherboard with it when it died. Once I replace the MOBO everything else started working right again.

 

[Zedric]

Newer PSU:s have more plugs (P4 plug for instance).
Both are switching PSU:s (as far as I know, they all are).

 

[Jannae]

well, i was kind of suspecting that it might be the mobo or the CPU gone bad rather than the power supply.

What was happening was that the computer would just shut down after about 10-20 minutes of use. Then you wouldn't be able to turn it back on until you flipped the switch on the power supply and unplugged it. I know it sounds weird, but when you did that, you could actually hear it discharge through the monitor. Once you heard the discharge, you could turn the computer back on, and work for another 10-20 minutes until you had to do it again. I'm not very electrical, so i'm not real sure what was causing that, but now that i'm having no luck with the new one, although the issues are different, i'm beginning to think it may be the mobo. does that sound right to you guys?

 

[Bluecat]

I have a machine that acts very similiar to this and the power trick you described works sometimes, but sometimes I reset the CMOS and bingo! (jumper on mobo)

The difference in mine is I get nothing but a black screen, no boot screens and no beep codes. After a short time of the HDD light flashing though, it comes on solid as well. I've had it lock down while I was in the BIOS settings too.

I changed every component in that machine except the mobo trying to track it down, but never found it. Which kind of points at the mobo or BIOS I would guess. It's a PII 400 in an intel 440bx board. If it had a flash available, I'd probably try that.

May be off the mark a bit here, but it seems the information in the BIOS is getting garbled somehow since the reset works.

BTW, once it boots, it runs perfectly. (for what it is...)

I know I'm not solving your problem here, just though I'd share.