550VX random reboots

Recently, about one and a half to two weeks ago, I installed a new hard drive in my PSU upgraded Dell Inspiron 530 w/ Vista Home Premium. That went ok, past the fact that it's tough to move around in such a small case! It's very cluttered, especially with a giant mass of cables from the new PSU crowding around the memory and 24 pin connector area.

With the new hard drive, my system specs were this:

 

E6550 @ stock

Foxconn G33M02 Motherboard

8600GT OEM @ 635/897(I think), reverted to stock later on.

2 gigs of 667mhz Dell/Kingston Ram

TSST corp DVD burner/Rom drive

2 Seagate Barracuda 320 gig 7200.10 ST3320620AS SATA II drives

 

However soon after that, while late at night chatting with someone online, I heard a whining sound coming out of the PSU area. I had heard of this being a problem in some Corsair units so I decided to reboot, which fixed the problem. This marked the beginning of my troubles, because I do remember that soon after I began getting an occasional random reboot in WiC among a few other things like artificating. Reinstalling my drivers fixed the artifacting problem, but the random rebooting remained and got more serious as time went on, infact it got so bad that often times in the MS loading it would reboot itself. Somewhere along the way I also updated my BIOS while this was happening. Well, that ruled out it being a software problem, so I thought it might have been a minor PSU problem, like maybe there was something wrong with putting two hard drives on the same cable(silly with a Corsair 550VX and it's 41 amps on the 12v rail, I know). Then I thought it might have been an OS problem, perhaps some sort of virus, so I backed up my files to my new HDD, formatted, and reinstalled Vista. This fixed the problem...for a day. Then it came back with a vengeance.

 

I tried a few more ways of getting around the problem, including taking out and inspecting the right side ram stick with little luck until I decided that if there was a virus, it might have been taken along into the new HDD. Reluctantly, I wiped everything on both drives(I actually got a reboot when I was almost finished formatting C again), but that still didn't seem to work. Not even removing the new hard drive altogether worked. Finally I managed to get memtest working, and was roughly halfway through the first test with no errors when the reboot thing kicked in. Subsequent tests revealed that the computer would pretty much be guaranteed to reboot before the test was finished.

 

So to me that left two options, either bad 550VX or bad Dell/Kingston memory. I still had my old 300 watt PSU that came with the system lying around, so I decided that I could more easily try another power supply. Sure enough, after putting the old Power supply in and booting up, I received no rebooting problems with the old PSU for the entire weekend that I had it in there and running. I wanted to make absolutely sure that it was a power supply problem so I tried the 550VX again, but this time I put the unit OUTSIDE of the case and hooked it up from there. It ran a full test in memtest ok, and I decided to boot onto Vista and try doing various activities there, which it did with no problems.

 

Encouraged, I thought about the possibility that the there may have been some sort of grounding problem before and it would be alright to hook the 550VX up inside of the case again. My luck ran out though, because after I did that the computer started randomly rebooting again. That was the issue then, a bad 550VX.

 

So what do I do now? What's going on here? Could cable clutter really cause a PSU to do this kind of thing? Why did this not happen sooner, instead of after 2 months of smooth and quiet operation?

I doubt I could test it in another computer, but I'll see if I can check with Dell to see if that works(though going by past testimonials from others I doubt they'll be very helpful, nor right). I'm pretty sure I've heard of people with similiar aftermarket units in Inspiron 530/531s, and like I mentioned before if it isn't compatible, why have I been running it since early November to last week without problems? How the heck does it being in a case and it not being in a case determine whether it randomly reboots or not if the unit fits?

 

Infact, looking at the Dell forums now, there is at least one case of a person saying that they have a 450VX in their Inspiron 531. Granted it's not the exact same model, but knowing Dell the differences between the two are going to be very minor even with the differences between Intel and AMD. Other people have reported putting things like Antec Truepower Trios with little issue in their 530s and I doubt there's an enormous difference between a 550VX and those ATX spec wise. In addition, I also admit the test wasn't perfect, it seems this problem manifests itself the most at night for some reason while I tested during the day(though it still can happen during the day). I'm usually quite busy at night and just can't do the disassembly required for exterior testing at night. I'll do a bit more investigation on those fronts though.

 

Don't think I'm trying to be disrespectful btw, I'm thankful for any help at all for this problem. I'll try to report within the next few days about the situation with a bit more testing and maybe try asking at the Dell forums themselves for any help in this.

Well like I said, the new 320 gig HDD. As for space, there's only half an inch or so of clearance between the PSU and the CPU fan because the geniuses over at Dell had the awesome idea of diagonally mounting the fan to the CPU HS in the most space inefficient way possible in what is already a fairly cramped SFF case. I have to bump against the CPU fan switching power supplies, and it's a pain but I think I got it down.

 

The PSU never gets hot. There is never any hot exhaust and the unit from my experience is always cool to the touch.

 

There are also multiple tabs on the PSU area which apparently serve no purpose other than to discourage installation of a new PSU. I bend those tabs though now after finding out how many there are(quite a few), which makes installing the unit much easier. Could it be some sort of grounding issue?

I'm working on that, there's a Nine Hundred sitting in my basement and has been since after Black Friday. I've been a bit hesitant though because of the strange and perhaps proprietary layout of the front panel connectors. Haven't been able to build up the courage to try a case swap even after tracing the wires from the power button to the connector.

 

Would the distance between the PSU and the CPU fan make that much of a difference after months of use?

Whoops, I worded it wrong, I mean in terms of the PSU's operation. Would having the plastic edge of the HS fan about half an inch(the HS is really a bit less than an inch from the PSU) really cause the PSU to not work correctly? Is there some sort of interference or heat issue?

Thanks for the offer, I'll keep that in mind as I further examine the issue. Who knows, it might not work outside of the case either, which would make it a serious issue.

 

For what it's worth, someone at the Dell forum is saying it went bad. I'm not too sure about that yet though: From what I can tell, this is the first instance of a 550VX doing this.

 

On the other hand, I've heard that Dell has moved away from proprietary PSUs, and this line supposedly uses standard ATX PSUs. If it was still proprietary, I would have supposedly fried the motherboard when I plugged it in. This isn't the case here, it's a tight fit but it fits and like I've said previously the unit was working fine for months before it started doing this so I don't know what's going on here. The fact that noone else has had a similar problem with a 550VX is just bizarre.

All the other systems available to me are also Dells, older models that may actually have the proprietary connectors so that's probably not a good way to test that. For now I'll just sit on the problem and test, to tell the truth I probably don't really need any action taken at least until I do the case upgrade.

 

On the other hand, it has been suggested that it may be a problem from the wall. This computer is connected to a power strip, so I may try to switch that out and see what happens.

The wall socket is actually two pronged, but there's a three-pronged adapter for the power strip and conceivably the PSU cable if I choose to try connecting it to the wall(though the wall socket is a bit close to the floor so the cord might not reach it). Someone suggested that I try a wall socket tester, but I don't have one handy so we'll see how it goes. :):

On a three prong to two prong socket adapter, there should be a green pigtail wire as well. This wire should be attached to the center wall plate (covering the socket itself) screw in order to establish ground.

Ok, I switched the power strip with an old surge protector that I had literally lying around in the basement. It didn't fix the problem but I think I've figured out how cable clutter could have caused random reboots. Not even an attempt at taking the cables to the bottom side of the case from the relatively recently discovered open area on the right side of the case(I don't think any reviewer or whatever had figured out that the right side panel was removable as well, though in hindsight it seems kind of obvious since that side has screws as well). When I was reassembling the unit inside of the case I noticed that one of the blue wires coming out of the first unsleeved inches of the wires were pinched in two places, about half an inch from each other and less than inch from the PSU housing.

 

I put that away in my head, and tried again and although logging onto windows was ok which admittedly actually doesn't mean much, I got a reboot at around the 50-60% mark in memtest, which did mean a lot because that was usually the part where the system reboots, if not earlier. When I took it out again, on a hunch I traced the blue wire to the 24 pin connector and knew something was up. Sure enough a search online revealed that this was the -12V rail wire, which explains everything really. By bending the pinched wire I made the system liable to fail on the 12v rail, which would take out pretty much everything on the computer.

 

I guess that solves the mystery of the interior rebooting PSU. Now, what to do about it. I know that I definitely won't be using this power supply inside this case again, and I suppose it was my fault because I thought I could cram the wires the 5.25" drive bay area case without any consequences(I planned to install a fan near the lower half of the case near the power button, but these plans never happened). I also wonder if I can RMA this. Can I?

 

(I guess packing it into the box couldn't have helped either. You guys need to pack your PSUs in bigger boxes. It's hard as hell trying to cram all the wires in there, and when I'm finished the box looks like it's about to explode. :p: )

Do you think I should include a picture of the pinched section of the wire in question for the RMA form or this thread? I just realized that this might not fit everyone's definition of what a pinched wire is. You see it actually hasn't broken through the housing yet, but it is noticeably bent in the two places in a way that I felt definitely wasn't in a harmless manner and which was not replicated by any other wire in the PSU. It looked minor but reminded me of what happens to headphones sometimes after heavy use, which can possibly have symptoms similar to what I'm seeing here. I'm not an expert on this so I'm still not quite sure if this is the culprit but I'm pretty positive that it should be. Not completely sure though.

 

Edit: Too late, decided to send it and link to this thread instead.

It seems that my RMA has been approved, and following some past advice from old posts on the forum, I'll see if I can't try to ship it in a USPS flat rate box. Cheaper and faster for me. :):

 

One thing though, the email is telling me to send it to "Attn: RMA Department" while Ram Guy's "I think I have a bad part" link tells me to send to "Attn: Returns", with all the other fields being the same. I'm probably more inclined to send it to the email link rather than what the post says, but I was just wondering about that discrepancy. There wouldn't be a difference between the two addresses right?

RMA = Return Merchandise Authorization

 

The address is the same for both, and it should not matter which Attn: description you decide to use. However I would write the RMA # that you were assigned on the outside of the box.

 

ex. RMA # C23987

Well I know what it means, I was just talking about the address part lol. Haven't done this kinda thing before, but it never hurts to try.

 

As for the RMA number suggestion, that sounds like a great idea.

Hopefully that'll will remove any future confusion about where to send. :):

 

Anyway, sent the PSU today. The packaging fit perfectly in a flat rate box, no slack from the box side of things. I guess that's why the packaging is that size, lol. It was my first time so I was sorta coaxed into paying extra for tracking, but I guess it's a fairly good idea to do that anyway as a first timer, and it's still cheaper and faster than any other method of shipping. Hope you guys get it soon! :biggrin: