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Fixed a PC That Kept Randomly Shutting Down by Swapping One Cable, Not the Power Supply
A client brought in a desktop last Tuesday that would shut off every 20 to 40 minutes, no pattern, no warning. I almost replaced the power supply first, which is what most of us would do. Instead I ran a 30 minute stress test while logging voltages, and the 12V rail was dropping to 11.1V under load. Turned out the issue was a cheap molex to SATA adapter feeding two drives, and it was slowly cooking itself. Swapped that one $4 cable for a proper SATA power run and it has been running 6 days straight now. Has anyone else seen those adapters cause shutdowns that look exactly like a dying PSU?
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hayden58710d ago
Gotta disagree on the PSU part honestly. 11.1V on the 12V rail under load is like 7.5% off, which is way past the 5% spec, so that PSU was already on its way out. The bad adapter probably just pushed it over the edge. Those molex to SATA things are junk and I've seen them melt, but a healthy PSU would've held that rail steady even with the drives pulling through a bad connection.
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