I hate my life. Dead Corsair HX850 after one startup

M

MX-5 Dave

Gawd
Joined
Jan 14, 2007
Messages
568
I know its nothing to do with the quality, its just my crap luck :mad:
I hooked everything up, routed all the cables, made everything pretty, and tested the PS with a paperclip. The lights came on, and the fans kind of bumped forward. I nudged a blade, and they all came on.

So I check everything, nothing is shorted, nothing is holding any fans stuck, that wouldnt mess things up anyway.

So I try it again, it fires right up. I plug everything into the mobo, it fires right up, posts and I shut it back down since its not in my office yet and I wasnt going to install windows until I get it in my office.

I wait a few min, go to show my wife, its dead. Nothing, Fans dont move, no signs of life at all. Thinking maybe its a switch, I pull the plug and use the paperclip. Nothing.
I unhook EVERYTHING from it. Nothing. I wait a few min, try again with only one fan as a load, paperclip it and same as first time, fans bump forward a touch, then stop. I give them a nudge, it fires right up. On/off/on a few times, it all seems good. Plug everything (everything, drives, fans, lights, mobo) and hit the button, fires right up, I hold the button to shut it down, I do this a few times, all seems well.

I wait a few min, nothing. Dead. Wont even paperclip now.

Luckily Newegg ROCKS. They sent me an RMA with a prepaid label, told me to order a new one overnight and that they would refund the overnight shipping costs for the replacement. The suck part is this happened on a Friday, so it wont go out till Monday, which means Tuesday is when I will be trying again. I know its a kickass PSU. (well, most of them are :eek: ) but I dont get to know that firsthand yet :mad:

I hate my life. Ok not really, but this sure does suck.
 
Tough luck man... here's to hoping your replacement is flawless. I have a 750 TX and it's very nice, quiet and has not let me down once.
 
Well I am pretty ashamed of myself right now lol.

So my replacement comes from newegg. I install it, everything is good, I install vista again, drivers and all that, everything is great. So I shut it down to hook the fans and everything back up, I go to fire it up, BAM dead. WTF...

I unplug EVERYTHING, I paperclip it, nothing. I wait, I paperclip it again, works.

Plug the mobo back in, hit power button, fires up. On/off a few times, everything is cool. Shut it down, hook fans etc back up, bam works great, in the past few times, it didnt work with fans etc plugged in. I had turned the CCFL on and off a few times and screwed with the fan controls.

During this time I started to suspect a short somewhere, as it seemed to not have the problem UNTIL I plugged in the fans and such. I didnt start to blame that yet though, as even once I unplugged those things, it still wouldnt fire up.

SO ok, its working fine at this point, so once again, I shut it down and plug things in. fires right up. GREAT! on/off a few times, everything is working great now.
Turn the CCFL on, I hear a snap/pop kinda noise, and it shuts off. I look down, I see the problem.

I had routed the on/off switch for the CCFL through under the HD area. Then screwed the casters into the case (HAF 932). When I did that, one of the wires got pinched. I unscrew it, sure enough, exposed wire. I unhook everything, no dice. Call Corsair tech support (got right through, AWESOME guy on the other end) and ask about the short protection, he says yup, and that it should come right back once the short was gone, but could take a little till everything discharges (I speculated that, he said it was a possibility)

So unshort the wire, hook EVERYTHING back up, bam fires right back up. I have moved the comp, turned it on/off, unplugged it, you name it, it works fine now.

Which means the PSU I RMA's was fine too. Crap... I waited since last friday to have a working machine, all because of that stupid damned CCFL wire.

But props to Corsair tech support and Newegg for their awesome service.
Many negative props to me for being a dummy and overlooking the simple things for almost a full week.
 
I think everybody here has at least once RMAed a working item :) At least you'll know what to look for next time you test a PSU ;)
 
Yeah. friggin wire.

But all is well that ends well. Its installing updates/patches a couple games and such right now.

Sitting happily at 4.18ghz as well :)
 
Elledan said:
I think everybody here has at least once RMAed a working item :) At least you'll know what to look for next time you test a PSU ;)
Click to expand...

You have no idea how much of the stuff that gets RMAd to us is perfectly fine. It's huge! PSUs are a higher actual failure rate, but memory is like less than half actual failure rate, meaning that more than half the people who RMA their memory to us had perfectly working memory and some other problem.

But memory problems are hard to diagnose, so there's not much you can do.
 
Meh my TX750 left me a bad taste. Won't try another corsair psu good NE took care of you.
 
Redbeard said:
You have no idea how much of the stuff that gets RMAd to us is perfectly fine. It's huge! PSUs are a higher actual failure rate, but memory is like less than half actual failure rate, meaning that more than half the people who RMA their memory to us had perfectly working memory and some other problem.

But memory problems are hard to diagnose, so there's not much you can do.
Click to expand...

Yeah, PSUs are a lot easier to troubleshoot since you can just use a DMM and possibly an oscilloscope with them to see whether they work at various loads. To test RAM in a similar manner you'd need one of those dedicated testing devices they use in factories and labs. Then again, a basic knowledge of troubleshooting RAM and the availability of spare parts goes a long way too :) I have RMAed RAM once so far, which was with a stick of GeIL RAM which progressively got worse after running memory tests on it for two days. That was a clear clue.
 
You learn quick that the best way to problem solve a PC hardware issue is to take apart the PC and try it naked. Especially if you about to go through all the work of an RMA.
 
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