[Aleks]

I'm writing this just to share some experience that I had with a nasty PS failure. I had a 460W PS from Antec, running a Radeon 9800, 2 DVD's and 3 HD's on an ASUS A7N8X-E Mobo and it had been running OK for over a year.

Then the PC began to have a slower start and some unexplained crash to desktop while gaming. Also I seemed that lag increased in online gaming. I tried to scan my PC for virus and spyware but nothing was found. The slow start got slower and some HD failures started to occur. I scanned my HD's and repaired them but few day's later they crashed again.

I had to replace them a little later after series of crashes. I was getting really pissed. The graphic card seemed to be getting noisy and the unexplained crashes to desktop and sometimes with complete system crash. So one day when slow starting I opened the BIOS as I had done many times before and when checking everything once again I noticed in the power section of the BIOS that the 5V output level of the PS was only 4.45V!!! All other voltage values where OK. I got an old 400W PS and tried it and VOLA things went back to normal and it's still running strong after 3 weeks.

So after 6 months of slowly degrading PC, 2 HD losses, data loss + many hours of re-installing software, scanning my PC and searching on the net and in forums for a solution, I found out that a 0.55 V lover output on my 5V connection on my PS was the reason for this all.

Next time your PC starts acting strange and no virus/spyware is involved, try to check the voltage of your PS before checking anything else (takes a very short time) That could save a lot of frustration, time and money.

Regards

Aleks