So, Bob plugs in his 2005 Acer Game PC, does not even turn it on, but then there is a quite loud bang, much like a light bulb imploding (so don’t nag if it was an im- or explosion) and the PC refuses to turn on. Graphics cards smelled funny, took it out, plugged in PC (now also with new power supply to make sure), disconnected all other stuff like HDD and DVD-ROM and … it turns on, the CPU fan starts turning and then the fan stops again. Most likely motherboard fried.
I had the same back in 2004 when a PC actually started to burn (a cable connected to the internal speaker), which also friend the motherboard and ruined the interface to the graphics card (as a diagnosis PCI card revealed which my wife knows how to handle). The apartment those days had flickering lights, so that might be a reason.
Before that, the ACER and another older PC often did not turn on, had to take out RAM and graphics card and then plug them back to get them started.
I had it with PCs, I bought 3 notebooks over the last year and do not need anymore PCs in Taiwan. Must be the damned moisture here. Notebooks cope with humidity and bad power much better, knock on wood.
So rot in hell, damned Acer, as you lie there, shiny and new (at least looking like it) on the floor, with your blue motherboard and matching blue graphics card. ROT IN HELL!
:raspberry:
HDD makes a good enclosure for backups now with a SATA cable and power thingy.
Most likely a blown capacitor by the sound of it, but it shouldn’t have affected more than one part in the system.
These things sadly happen when cheap electrolyte capacitors are used and it was a too common problem a few years ago when both motherboards and graphics card were affected in rather large amounts due to the fact that some companies were trying to cut corners and save some money and bought cheap components for irreputable sources. I haven’t heard about this happening for years now though, but it seems like you were unlucky and bought a cheap machine that used cheap components.
Now if you want to get rid of the other bits you got left, I’ll take them off your hands…
[quote=“TheLostSwede”]Most likely a blown capacitor by the sound of it, but it shouldn’t have affected more than one part in the system.
These things sadly happen when cheap electrolyte capacitors are used and it was a too common problem a few years ago when both motherboards and graphics card were affected in rather large amounts due to the fact that some companies were trying to cut corners and save some money and bought cheap components for irreputable sources. I haven’t heard about this happening for years now though, but it seems like you were unlucky and bought a cheap machine that used cheap components.
Now if you want to get rid of the other bits you got left, I’ll take them off your hands… [/quote]
Taiwanese OEM/ODM design procedure:
Copy the reference implementation design in your EDA software.
Slowly delete capacitors until the design no longer works.
Replace the remaining capacitors with cheaper quality variants.
Pocket the difference and buy some land for a posh Neihu HQ.
Ah… cheap capacitors. Looks like I had this fun twice now. So far I like my gaming notebooks, no need for a PC anymore.
Afraid they explode as well… … I will go easy on the photon torpedoes and not redirect too much energy to weapons in Star Trek Legacy, then I should be fine. Will avoid the oversexed Defiant class, who knows how my capacitors would take that one…
Notebooks generally use different components compared to desktop systems, so you shouldn’t have these kind of issues with your notebooks. Most motherboard these days (at least the decent quality ones) use solid capacitors, so this isn’t really an issue any more.
Did you hear that, you bunch of short-skirted product managers right next to me? Stop putting on that lipstick a third time this hour, Amy, And Ashely, sit in your chair properly. Put on those new glasses and then you can read the capacitor spec properly!
Ah no, those are the server PMs. The Notebook PMs are a few floors lower.
(No, I don’t work at Acer, I bought that box before I worked here in this empresa)
In Taiwan, I noticed there are higher risks of power fluctuation due to lack of grounding and horrible electrical insulation in older buildings, which in the end produces higher chances of build up in static electricity. One way to compensate that is to get a very good UPS + surge power box outlet.
Which is why you seem to favor laptop, as it has its own battery to act as a power regulator.
The best solution for desktops is to build one yourself. Then you have control over what components go into your computer, and can easily upgrade part by part.
No, the Notebooks are PC Notebooks meant for XP or Vista, but now have (2 of 3) openSUSE 11.1 as first OS and XP for seldom use. OK, some use on the latest gaming Notebook.
Yeah, the old PC which wife assembled when I came here (she didn’t want to let me near it) still works. Stopped working sometimes, but cleaning of MB and components and reassembling always solved the problem.
And I am not really satisfied with my Notebooks. The are so boring, I cannot fiddle inside and see what’s going on inside…
So, can I still find old Pentium IV motherboards somewhere and secretly put life back into the PC? Wife may not know it! She is happy the damned power-sucking thing exploded
My wife dropped her laptop so while I was fiddling around in there I upgraded all the obvious stuff like memory and HD along with the optical drive and wireless card. Then it ran faster than my brand new laptop so I cracked mine open and changed to a solid state HD. Plenty of stuff to fiddle with in there…
Regarding Solid State Disk, I read on forums they easily break down when you write on the same part again and again, like using a Linux Swap partition.
When I had it in the lab, one soon broke down (we used ext3 and swap, no good). Also, openSUSE versions were sometimes very slow (depending on the version) with one model, but fast with another model. Still quite a raw technology. What OS is on your Laptop? I heard Win 7 supports them well…’
[quote=“bob_honest”]Hmmmm… I will be more brave when they get older.
Regarding Solid State Disk, I read on forums they easily break down when you write on the same part again and again, like using a Linux Swap partition.[/quote]
All modern commercial SSDs have write-levelling mechanisms that prevent excessively rewriting the same physical block.
Yeah, that could be a problem. SSDs don’t play well with swap partitions. It’s best to configure your Linux to use a swap file instead of swap partition in this case, esp since there is no benefit to using contiguous blocks on a SSD.
In real world use a high end SLC drive will last much longer than its mechanical counterpart. The very best drives have twice as much internal space as they present to the host system so whenever a block is ‘worn out’ the drive can automatically write the data to a new block.
Random write performance is the downfall of SSD drives which makes them unsuitable for use in virtual memory applications (i.e. swap). A swapping Windows system will perform just as badly on an MLC drive as Linux. You will notice effects of swapping earlier on a modern Linux system vs XP because Ubuntu, Debian etc. are all pretty bloated and load a huge amount of stuff into memory on boot.
To maintain SSD performance you really need to buy twice as much space as you plan to use and keep half the drive empty.
I have tried one of our spare SLC drives in my laptop and the speed is insane. Windows XP boots so fast that you don’t even see the Windows banner before the desktop appears. Everything you do is just instant. Unfortunately the drive cost more than my whole laptop so it had to go back in the server it was bought for and I am now running an MLC drive from Transcend.
I have a relatively small (32GB) SSD with the OS and some other stuff while everything else is saved to an external e-Sata drive. I use Windows XP on this machine but I trimmed the installation down with nLite.
Oh, I forgot one of the other reasons I moved to SSD was that my son has managed to destroy 3 HDs in the past 2 months. I let him play with this SSD, he threw it down the stairs a few times and still works fine.
It’s something to be aware but if you do live near hot springs, expect corrosion and excessive damage on electrical items. Beitou, Yangmingshan seem particularly affected by this. Since I don’t live there, I can’t verify it exactly.
… I will go easy on the photon torpedoes and not redirect too much energy to weapons in Star Trek Legacy, then I should be fine. Will avoid the oversexed Defiant class, who knows how my capacitors would take that one…