another dead computer

[rallynavvie]

My Dell internet machine took the dive sometime yesterday. I came home from work and in my usual routine grabbed a drink and went to my office to check email, forums, pay some bills, the usual stuff I do online. However I walk in there and it's shut off. That's odd because nobody else lives here and if it froze up it wouldn't have shut itself off. The only thing I could think of was it got so hot running F@H in that stupid-ass Dell case all day that it shut down, but that wasn't too likely since it's been running F@H in its spare time for over two years and nothing has happened. It didn't power back on though so I opened it up and looked around a little but didn't see anything that looked out of place. Checked fittings on cables and tried powering it up but even the PSU wasn't coming on. Something was toasted good somewhere in there.

Fortunately back when I bought that machine I was young and foolish and got a 4 year service plan on it so I called Dell last night, went through the silly level one questions that they have to ask, and then came to the point where they said they were going to send a tech out on Monday. So until then I get to surf the intarw3b with my HTPC

BTW the thermal management in Dell desktops absolutely sucks ass. Just wanted that on the record

[Cobra]

You should see the ventilation in my PC. PSU is a dual-fan model, and I have two 80mm intake fans at the front blowing onto the hard drives, one 80mm intake on the side blowing onto the motherboard, and a 120mm exhaust fan on the back of the case. It's rather breezy in there!

Hope all goes well with Dell.

[Capmaster]

You should see the ventilation in my PC. PSU is a dual-fan model, and I have two 80mm intake fans at the front blowing onto the hard drives, one 80mm intake on the side blowing onto the motherboard, and a 120mm exhaust fan on the back of the case. It's rather breezy in there!

Hope all goes well with Dell.

You better super-glue that bad boy to the desk or it's liable to take flight

[hech54]

My Dell 4500 has dust CAKED at the ventilation holes( ) most of the time and it has never acted up on me....

[zzyzzx]

You should see the ventilation in my PC. PSU is a dual-fan model, and I have two 80mm intake fans at the front blowing onto the hard drives, one 80mm intake on the side blowing onto the motherboard, and a 120mm exhaust fan on the back of the case. It's rather breezy in there!

And people three houses away can hear it.

[zzyzzx]

My Dell 4500 has dust CAKED at the ventilation holes( ) most of the time and it has never acted up on me....

Compress air should take care of that problem pretty quickly....

[rallynavvie]

Meh, it's an OEM so I don't feel very bad about it going down. They'll come in and fix it or get me a new one, I know how it works with Dell. They're our supplier of crappy workstations at work which constantly have problems ranging from bad onboard network controllers, memory errors on their RDRAM systems (inconceivable), and swapping mice/keyboards/floppies out once a month.

[hech54]

My Dell 4500 has dust CAKED at the ventilation holes( ) most of the time and it has never acted up on me....

Compress air should take care of that problem pretty quickly....

Hah....that just blows the dust right back INTO the computer....I prefer the vacuum cleaner approach...

[freestylegreek]

Hey since we talking about dell's i have a DELL Demension 8200. 250 watt power supply 1.8Ghz 512RDram and i have 2 HD's and a CDRW drive.

Im going to get a pioneer 108 and get rid of the CDRW. There shouldnt be any issues right? I know people have told me there wont be any issues but after hearing what happened in your case makes me wonder.

My Dell internet machine took the dive sometime yesterday. I came home from work and in my usual routine grabbed a drink and went to my office to check email, forums, pay some bills, the usual stuff I do online. However I walk in there and it's shut off. That's odd because nobody else lives here and if it froze up it wouldn't have shut itself off. The only thing I could think of was it got so hot running F@H in that stupid-ass Dell case all day that it shut down, but that wasn't too likely since it's been running F@H in its spare time for over two years and nothing has happened. It didn't power back on though so I opened it up and looked around a little but didn't see anything that looked out of place. Checked fittings on cables and tried powering it up but even the PSU wasn't coming on. Something was toasted good somewhere in there.

Fortunately back when I bought that machine I was young and foolish and got a 4 year service plan on it so I called Dell last night, went through the silly level one questions that they have to ask, and then came to the point where they said they were going to send a tech out on Monday. So until then I get to surf the intarw3b with my HTPC

BTW the thermal management in Dell desktops absolutely sucks ass. Just wanted that on the record

[hudsonf]

It's probably a bad power supply. The few I've taken apart had fuses in them and they were burnt out. The only problem is they were not made to be changed and I didn't want to chance frying my computers so I replaced them.

[rallynavvie]

In my case I had a Dell with its processor running full tilt almost all day, not quite the same as swapping out optical drives. I move optical drives around all day on the Dells at work so you shouldn't have any problems with that. I'm guessing my problems lies in the power supply or something went on the board.

[freestylegreek]

Oh alright well thanks for the info.

[glockjs]

thats the only prob, you cant just open it up and start messin with it cause then they probably wouldnt honor the warranty gawd forbid you fix the prob. ah well you did the right thing rally, called and talked to the rep that asks you the stupidest questions in the world. i love that though. everytime i call im playing video games...im like uh huh ill try that...nope didnt work...

[rallynavvie]

Well as fate would have it I was out of work sick today so I actually was able to take the tech visit during the day though I was in no mood to argue with the guy about what was or wasn't wrong. He came in with a new power supply, some memory modules, and a spare video card. I took out all the PCI cards and tried to boot with no luck, then swapped the video cards for the same result. Put the new power supply in and still nothing. So he said I must have done something to it to make it go down. Now that was an interesting thought. I use that computer for internet, email, and sometimes send encodes over to it when I'm really pressed. I did tell him I run F@H on that machine which runs 24/7 and he got on me a bit about that but he knew there was really nothing wrong with running an app like that all day and night, not if Dell had efficient cooling systems in their computers.

He checked a few more "environmental" items (things that would make this my fault). Stopped him pretty quick when he saw the tower was plugged into a 500VA UPS so no brownout or power spike issues could have caused it, the computer hutch it's in doesn't leave the most room for cooling but I took the door off the spot where the tower goes so there would be plenty of airflow through there. Finally it took showing him the other two workstations buzzing along happily in their own element to prove I wasn't a complete idiot to computers. He asked if he could take the PC (less the hard drives) and he'd be back out with a new one later this week. Since it's old tech I hope I'll be getting something newer. A slightly faster system in there may become my gaming machine again

[glockjs]

yeah good luck on that one. when i took my bestbuy machine back they actually found a 1.1 cel and mobo to replace it

its funny how warrantys work. you buy it so the store will help you if anything goes wrong. but when something does go wrong it seems like they try to find every reason not to help you


anyways, cross your fingers rally. hopefully your getting a faster puter for xmas

[zzyzzx]

Hey since we talking about dell's i have a DELL Demension 8200. 250 watt power supply 1.8Ghz 512RDram and i have 2 HD's and a CDRW drive.

Im going to get a pioneer 108 and get rid of the CDRW. There shouldnt be any issues right? I know people have told me there wont be any issues but after hearing what happened in your case makes me wonder.

you might want to be thinking about getting a high quality power supply that can put out at least 350W.

[tekkieman]

Hey since we talking about dell's i have a DELL Demension 8200. 250 watt power supply 1.8Ghz 512RDram and i have 2 HD's and a CDRW drive.

Im going to get a pioneer 108 and get rid of the CDRW. There shouldnt be any issues right? I know people have told me there wont be any issues but after hearing what happened in your case makes me wonder.

you might want to be thinking about getting a high quality power supply that can put out at least 350W.

For an 8200, that's probably ok to do. Many Dell models (with their pathetically underrated supplies) are repinned. Plug a stock PS into the MB and watch it smoke! You have been warned.

However, I can tell you if your removing the CD-R/W and replacing it, what's in there will be ok. The things to watch for:

Dell likes to use single cables. You might need a cable as well.
Dell installs all IDE devices as CS (cable select). If you want to use master/slave, you need to change the jumper on all devices on the channel.

Finally,

BTW the thermal management in Dell desktops absolutely sucks ass. Just wanted that on the record

Nope. Dell's thermal management doesn't suck, and it doesn't blow. That's the root of the problem!

[rallynavvie]

PC Power and Cooling make power supplies that work in Dell computers. Best part is they make some of the best power supplies in the biz. I won't be needing a bigger PSU, I've left that computer at the same specs as when I bought it. However I've got this 5600 Ultra sitting around now so I should probably be looking at a bigger supply.

[rallynavvie]

Well they're sending me a new one. Apparently I busted a cap on the board (which speaks volumes on the quality of Dell desktop boards) and that pretty much torched the system. I guess I wasn't even thinking to look for bulging or burned caps when I had the thing open, I've never had one go. Anyway since I was not using the computer improperly (overclocking, unsupported hardware, etc.) they are sending me a new one. They don't support the 1.6 P4 for returns anymore so I am getting a bump up to a 2.0 P4, though I think it may be the same board. It does have a 350W power supply so I just might move that other video card in there when I get it. The other thing is I think they're sending another 80GB hard drive in it but I kept the two 80GB drives that were in there because I didn't get a chance to scrub them before the computer went down so the tech just left them with me. I've got my tracking number and the new PC will arrive Monday.

Meanwhile I'm resorting to posting from my main workstation now since the Tyan is in "hardware testing" mode. It's on its side with its guts hanging out here next to this computer while I try different things to get this NVTV tuner card to work in it. So far it isn't going so well which really pisses me off since eVGA assured me the card would work on a Tyan 2460. And of course it's the weekend so their tech support is closed, and better yet their tech support hours are the exact same hours I work my day job so I can't be next to the computer on a support call unless I take a sick day. What utter f'ing BS