The PSU chronicle

Well, I still don't know what the hell is going on.

I took my new PSU into the shop to show them what was up. But when they plugged it into their test gear, the multimeter showed normal readings across the board. In fact, compared to my readings, some of the voltages I said were high were a little low, while those I said were low were a little high.

Anyway, they suggested I retest my PC with the old PSU plugged in, and then retest the PSU myself by plugging in only 1 device at a time to see if there was something drawing an unusual amount of juice that would cause my low readings.

So home I went. First I plugged in my old PSU into the mobo and video card alone - no hard drive. The system posted fine and the BIOS readings looked very normal. Then in went the new Corsair PSU (the same setup). The readings were still low. But I did make note of the fact that the power button was now acting normal again and starting the power supply on the first button press.

So I shut it down and added the hard-disk and floppy, all on the same cable. This also posted fine and the voltages were still low. But again, the ATX wake-up button seemed to be delivering enough power. So then I shut it down and plugged in the second IDE line for my optical drives (these on a second line). Also booted okay.

I dreaded the next step (because I had troubles with the case accessories before). But I shut down a final time and plugged in the case fans and front-pannel (on the line with the optical drives). And surprise! Everything was up and running and no sign of the strange ATX power button weirdness I reported earlier. It seems like the low voltage was NOT the cause of the false-start because I'm still reading between 4.70 and 4.73 volts on the 5V line.

I refer you to the old fallback: "why ask why?"