Think it through. When eMachines used 12 or more different power supplies by several different companies, would this be the cause? Most of the boards are made under license from Intel and others, in plants such as the Tri-Gem plants in Korea.
Most techs are making an assumption without testing.
We have spent considerable money on engineers, and lab testing, in preparation for a class action suit. We now have 325 eMachines in sealed plastic bags in a barn... all have been tested. We have also tested and saved working eMachines.
We are fully convinced that the power supplies were good until the motherboard failed and took the power supplies with them... that does not include the 250 Watt Bestec, but we have that Bestec all over the market in HP, Compaq, SystemMax, and Gateway computers with no record of this happening... except the HP failures when the video graphics failure.
There are 14 models of T-series emachiens, and 5 models of W-series machines that consistently have failed. We have no correlating information on the power supplies.
That arguement just does not hold up. If you found a bad power supply and a bad motherboard, you just made the assumption that the power supply is what failed.
Think it through... or test them.

"That arguement just does not hold up. If you found a bad power supply and a bad motherboard, you just made the assumption that the power supply is what failed.
Think it through... or test them"...

I used to think that way until I got into your informative posts Raybay. You have convinced me. I always replace both the power supply and the motherboard in any eMachines without question. I properly troubleshoot any other make computer. When I see any Bestec PS... It goes! I've replaced a HiPro power supply or 2 also

I agree, Tmagic650, but I'm always optimistic for the motherboard when a 300W fails. Of course, our forum members have no testing facilities anyway. Perhaps raybay has more data on the 300W supplies. It's got to be down to adding overvoltage protection in the eMachines "enhanced" supplies, hasn't it?

Here are a couple of samples of that scary ol' Bestec 250W, the one on the left usually took a long stab of the button to fire up:



I just did a quick straw poll at my forum of what eMachines blows up most often, and it is the Trigem Imperial 845 models and OEM Intel D845GVSR. The socket A, VIA KM266 based ECS L7VMM2 and FIC AM37 and AM35 OEM versions also drop like flies. These are all Bestec 250W models.

There are three observations I would make here. These are all the era of 250W power supplies, hot running with no case fans, and the acknowledged bad/leaking capacitor motherboard problem, which BTW also afflicted power supplies and other components.

Raybay, I think you've got your work cut out to pin it down to a motherboard problem. It seems interrelated to me. A weak power supply stressing regulator circuits and capacitors, overheating and the bad capacitor problem are all at work here. As are the usual mains supply surge and lightning problems.

here's a real look at the 250 w bestec:

here's the emachines I took it out of:


Here's the Coolmax V-400 that i stuck into the emachine:


Ever since the coolmax has been in there, this puppy has been a performer!

and I agree with system 7, the first emachine my mom used had an Imperial GL_VE 845G board with a bestec 250 watt PSU. all it took was a thunderstorm and the bestec couldn't stop itself from frying the board. Yet everything else survived! I am using the CD-RW drive and the DVD-ROM drive in my current computer...

cubecompMTDX, gotta love the photos and comments.

Like you, my D845GVSR based 2220 is chugging along nicely with a better PSU.

So we have a decent W2888 Intel D845GVSR, with a new power supply to be sure.

One Imperial GLVE struck by lightning.

Here's a leaky capacitor W2888 D845GVSR to add to the mix, lest we get complacent.
Now I know some folks are uncomfortable with irony, but let me add that you can replace a blown motherboard in an eMachines with something much better, with Microsoft's blessing. Plus get an education in repairing computers. That's gotta be some deal!

Good posts guys. All my eMachines experiences are from the older 4+ years models... Hard drives and an ocassional PCI modem I have replaced often. All the eMachines owners have been the "little old grandmother" type users

It is wonderful to see this lively debate rage on. I'm certain that Emachine's dirty deeds deserve a class action law suit. But, I still don't think you can continue to stereotype Emachines current offerings by what the machines were in the past. This thread and peoples perceptions continually reiterate some "facts" about the boxes in a blanket manner regardless of what this manufacturer is or has become. These things are now Gateways. Do they even still use Tri-gem Mobos?

As I sit here typing this post on my approaching 3 year old Emachines T-5026. P4 Prescott, 915GAG Intel board, know this boys and girls; this machine has had 2 power supplies fail, and we're still on the OEM mobo.

Supply 1: The OEM 300 watt something or other.
"It was a hot day (98 degrees in July), My comp smelled funny". Next day it wouldn't boot. I fed it an Antec 350 Watt Smartpower 2.0. Away it went.
Supply 2: The Antec 350 began to whine and you had to hold to power button in for as much as a minute to restart the computer. Blue lighty blinky muchy.
Supply 3: Antec "Earth Watts EA380" Running 5 x 5 at the moment.

As I keep pointing out these machines are now made of the same snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails as the rest of the junk in the industry.
Gateway is using (and I assume purchased the line) as entry level PCs. Any electronics marketer worth it's salt has a higher end product just sitting there waiting to be sold up to in place of the cheaper one. At one point Emachines only offered 4 models on the website.

As a reinforcement to the marketing issue, consider this; the T-5026 comes with an Intel 915GAG mobo. At the time it was Emacnines' top of the line (Intel) offering. However, while the 915 chipset supports PCIE x16, the T-5026's board is crippled on purpose by the omission of the PCIE x 16 socket. The moral of the story is, if you wanted that feature, you had to step up to a Gateway branded box to get it.

I just don't think it's fair at the present to assume that any given Emachines is going to blowup momentarily. Having said that, please understand I not trying to deny the troubles of the past. But the knee-jerk nonsense really needs some common sense and thought applied.

Now, here's what really confuses me, most of the people on this site are computer "enthusiasts", which is sort of a euphimism for somebody who's not happy if their equipment is more than 6 months old. So why the outrage when a 3 year old $350.00 computer goes down? After all there is such a thing as depreciation. Just because your car payments totaled $20,000.00, doesn't mean it's going to be worth that when you try and sell it.

The constant boo-hoo, had to reformat, lost data, ad naseum does get tedious when you can slap another hard drive in any desk top mini-tower and stick your files on that. So, when the mobo goes up in a cloud of foul smelling, toxic smoke, just unplug the POS, yank out the volume drive, and stuff it in your new non-Emachines.

And you techs that repair Emachines, just keep complaining all the way to the bank.

Now, my T-5026 will be 3 in Feb. '08 (hopefully it will make it). It cost me $570.00 (2 optical drives, P4, card reader), that's about $190.00 a year. Not what I would consider an extravagent entertainment expense.

I hope this wasn't too harsh. And yes, rebuttal is always welcome.

Absolutely, you can. The eMachines desktop and the eMachines laptop still have the highest failure rate in the industry, though they are currently the third largest maker of computers worldwide.
They still offer only a one year warranty, but have added a two year warranty if the customer wishes to pay for it.
The price is low. The power supplies have been really very good for three years. They use decent value ram memory, good modems, very good ethernet cards, average hard drives, average cpu fans.
But the eMachine motherboard fails still at a tremendous rate.
The famous Gateway tech support has nothing whatsoever to do with eMachines tech support, and the eMachine line, as well as probably the Gateway line are being sold to Acer... or Packard Bell Europe... It was all in the Wall Street Journal last week.
When the eMachines people sold out to Gateway, they required that Gateway continue to provide support to Tri-Gem for two more years. The owner of TriGem, and all his other electronics companies of Korea is on the board of Gateway.
Gateway needed the cash infusion, not the eMachines business.

In the interest of saving us from ourselves, computer manufacturers should probably ship every box with dual HDDs, in Raid 1 ! Perhaps in a breakaway fire retardant case with a carrying handle that says "Pull handle after fire subsides". You know like a flight data recorder. Having grown up in the "paper age" it never fails to amaze me how people can put all their priceless data inside a vague electronic environment and expect it to stay there forever and ever. It's almost as abstract as religion.

An honest question is, were those Bestec PSUs that failed, "after a thunderstorm", hooked up to surge supressors? (No I'm not saying they're good PSUs, they're certainly not).

Heating due to insufficient voltage is something that even occurs in something as primitive as a circular saw. Given a fixed resistance in the presence of reduced voltage, will cause the circuit to consume higher current, precipitating higher heat. Ohm's law, you just can't get around it. And yes, a cheap over-rated PSU will not present sufficient voltage (under increased load), to whatever it's connected to. It's the high tech equivalent of the too long, too thin extension cord.

Raybay suggests that Emachines have average HDDs. Perhaps so, the problem I have here is, that one of my Emachines came with a WD1600 "Caviar" SATA 1, the other a Seagate 120 GB PATA. The obvious question this generates is, where would you go and how much would spend to get better ones? In any event this would defeat the purpose of a budget priced computer line. (I hope I didn't misinterpret average).

The reduction of length of warranty is an electronics industry wide phenomenon that started long, long ago, due to cost. You could have 2 year (or longer) warranties back, if you were still willing to pay $400.00 for a VHS VCR. On the other hand, selling extended warranties props up a retailer's profit margin which in certain instances is quite low.

Gateway's "Answers by Gateway" should be, (I was told is), available to Emachines users. Although it's about a dollar a second. < that might be a slight exaggeration.

Needing a cash infusion is likely to happen when you have a nationwide chain or retail stores painted to look like Guernsey cattle, selling over-priced computers. Or were they Hereford?

Still the fact remains that Emachines provides line continuity from low to high price for Gateway, at least at the moment.

If in fact Emachines is being sold to Packard-Bell Europe, does that mean the heartaches will leave the colonies only to be branded euro-trash? Or that Acers will now begin to fail at an alarming rate? Does the Korean ever lose his job? Stay tuned!

the bestec was hooked up to a massive surge protector when the storm occurred. But nothing else in the house got touched by lightning. Also, I do recall that PSU zapping you when you touched it. I dissected that system, pulled everything out... I used the case to build a spare Pentium III computer, hung the fried Imperal board on my bedroom wall as a decoration, and to hold my spare cpu, and I gave that bestec to my friend tim who tested it. Here's the funny thing, once he plugged it up, every capacitor inside blew up, and on the 12v rail, it was putting out 36v!!! 3X too much! The pulled DDR works, the original 1.8 Celeron... idk.

You better replace that "massive surge protector" too. I always replace both the power supply and the motherboard in all "blown" eMachines computers... We can argue wether it's the power supply or the motherboard that fails first till the cows come home. Just replace both. Doing this saves a lot of time and produces a stable computer with a big "E" on the case

This is one good thread. Raybay, you still seeing a lot of motherboard failures, for whatever reason, with the newer Delta/HiPro/Bestec 300W supplies? Is it a particular newer motherboard you have noticed?

Because, like captaincranky, my gut feeling and observation is the 300W is better. The following is an Intel D865GVHZ with, originally, a 300W supply:

That's probably an overuse of the term. I myself would dial that down to "less spiteful" (than the 250s).

This expands my own question about "massive surge supressors". If lightning is capable of jumping through air at least a quarter mile or so, then how exactly is a ten dollar surge suppressor going to stop it?

As to the Emachines PSU that had been "zapping my niece", <(I think I read that in this thread, but I'll be damned if I can find it), really, you were given fair warning of impending failure.

As to the suggestion that we could argue ad infinitum which part fails first, yes we could, as well as which came first the chicken or the egg. But this is what I've been saying, that we should analyze each failure on a case by case basis.

This thread started on a slightly histrionic but very prudent note , that you should probably yank the stock PSU out of any Emachine computer and put in a good one as a matter of course, not wait until it becomes a necessity. After all, usually there was a substantial saving at the onset of your ownership. If it costs another 50 bucks to make your experience more pleasant, it's more than well worth it. After all, a PSU with good protection might stand a better chance of surviving a motherboard failure, but that's just me guessing.

Still I cast my vote for an extra hard drive in anything, in spite of the fact the system drives can be up to 500 GB. Bigger drives mean bigger disasters. It's sort of like the argument about jumbo jets, they don't crash that often, but oh boy, when they do.

At last, someone has seen the reason I started this thread.

It was never intended to be a debate.

I merely wanted to try to save a few e-machine owners some grief and expense.

Plenty of people here on TS quite rightly advise people who buy a case with a psu included to replace it. A standard e-machine psu is not going to be any better that one of those psu's no matter how recently it was made.


You get what you pay for! It's as simple as that!

rik, you have done everyone a service by starting this topic, and I have never seen a thread with such a high signal to noise ratio. A very good discussion based on everyone's personal experience of emachines desktops. And I see your original statement essentially justified.

That Bestec 250W PSU is a stinker.
Upgrading the 250W PSU in good time really seems to help.

Currently, however, my aired view of the eMachines 300W supplies, is you may as well run them into the ground when upgrading with video cards and other goodies. So far, touchwood, they merely crash the machine or blow without knock-on damage.

We have a cheerful guy at the forum with a 7900GS running on his recent 300W eMachines power supply, albeit with a modest conroe Celeron D352. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry. You gotta remember, these guys usually have to borrow the money from Mom to upgrade.

And I also really don't know if eMachines current practise of fitting 20 pin supplies to 24 pin boards is OK, or asking for trouble.

So I do hope the informed discussion runs a little longer.

This thread was never intended to be a debate.

Therefore, I think this thread has gone far enough.

I am therefore closing this thread, as I think further discussion is futile.

I`m sure you can all make your own minds up, given the info that`s been given.

Regards Howard