Is my psu almost finished?

[WinSpecToR]

This started happening only a while ago when I breidly plugged in an additional hard drive for a few mins. What I restart or turn the comp on after it was shut down for a night, it would power on, fans would spin for a few seconds and they turn off and the power comes back and this will loop forever, well I left it alone for 10 mins or so and was still doing it. To get it up and running I have to plug and replug the power cable and let it sit for a few mins before powering it on. When it works, there's no problems, it doesn't random shutdown or anything of that nature. It's a 800w psu so theres enough power, it is a
couple of years old.

[lowellriggsiam]

I'd look at the capicators on your motherboard. See if they are browning, bulging, or blown. CPU symptoms can be crazy, but usually result in unstable behavior with blue screens of death and abnormal intervals. If you take the memory out of your pc and turn it on and listen for a beep. I am betting you won't hear one. If you do the powersupply is likely the culprit.

[aedipuss]

if it's the system in your specs it's too new for bad caps. i'd say the power supply may be to small to handle any additional drain. at startup there is the most power consumption and it may fail at that point. if it manages to startup then it will run ok. a larger wattage p.s wouldn't have that problem.

[johns0]

A quality 800w psu is good enough to handle a few hdd,might be a bad hdd if the psu isn't at fault,i have a 650w antec trio and it can handle 2hdd,2 dvdrw drives and a 6950 video card.

[redwudz]

I have a couple of servers with a 500W Antic and Thermaltake PS with eight HDDs each and a DVDRW drive. Both PSs run cool and handle the drives with no problems. High performance video cards are the big power draw on PCs these days.

I would also check the front panel power button for shorts. That can cause similar problems. Having to use the power cord to power up properly could also relate to that.