Eating Power Supplies

[Mr.Wizard]

Hey. My PC seems to enjoy eating power supplies. I recently had a problem with it and replaced the power supply. It booted two or three times only to have the problem repeated. When I boot up, nothing is displayed (the screen doesn't even come out of sleep mode). There is a long beep that is repeated, which I believe is a BIOS error beep. All components have power, even the video card which I had suspected was dead because of the display problem. Like I said, this was fixed when I replaced the power supply but has started again. Any ideas?
Cheers!

 

[AlbertLionheart]

Was the new PSU of sufficient wattage to handle the power requirements of the PC?
Also, it may be that a component has a short which is killing the PSUs - did anything not work properly when you got your 2 or 3 boots?

 

[Mr.Wizard]

The power supply is 480 watts, and there were no problems noticed with the previous boots. It simply seems to have decided to go back on the fritz. I remember being able to access both hard drives, and both disc drives were working. Could be the video card or mobo then I suppose?

 

[AlbertLionheart]

480 watt sounds more than adequate.
Long single beep will depend on the mobo - have a look in the manual or on the net for the error codes.

 

[Tedster]

BIOS beeps indicate hardware failure. Read the guide in the guides forum.

If you have flakey power, get an UPS and a surge protector.

Also test your PSU with a psu tool and multimeter.