PSU Issues

When a power supply goes bad, the symptoms can be mysterious and confusing. The computer might hang. It might shut off all by itself. It might suddenly reboot. If your PC starts randomly partaking in such annoying activities, you might have to replace the power supply.

Enermax manual control PSU

Before you do, consider what you've done in the recent past. Have you been overclocking the CPU or chipset? Doing so can quickly eat up precious wattage and overtax the poor PSU. Have you added lots of stuff to your computer, such as a beefier graphics card, a bunch of bus-powered USB peripherals, a discreet sound card, multiple hard drives, or anything of that nature? Try removing or disconnecting some of that stuff and see if the computer's behavior smoothes out.

If, by chance, you're running in SLI a pair of Nvidia-based cards that require not one, but two PCI Express power leads, try this: Disconnect the PCI-E leads from the inner connector on each of your two graphics cards. With power coming only from the outermost connectors (those nearest the front of the PC), the computer should still boot an operating system—it just won't have the muscle to crank out demanding 3D graphics. If the computer stops rebooting, handing, shutting down, or whatever it was doing, you've just diagnosed a weak power supply.

What to do? Grab a higher-wattage PSU (or one from a trusted manufacturer)—if you're currently using a generic one. Trusted manufacturers include Cooler Master, PC Power and Cooling (now part of OCZ), Antec, Thermaltake, and a number of others. Or cut down the power demand in your PC. Lose one of the graphics cards if you're rocking an SLI or CrossFire system; replace high-demand parts with lower-wattage parts; stop overclocking.

That Game Looks Funny and Clean Those Contacts

We're not talking a Sam and Max comedy; maybe Crysis or Company of Heroes or Call of Duty 4 is showing bizarre or missing textures, running in fits and starts, or otherwise being weird.

Almost every time a PC game acts like this, it can be traced to one of two issues: The graphics card is overheating (either stop overclocking it or see read about thermal problems on the previous page), or you need a software fix. The software repair can be in the form of newer graphics drivers or a patch for the game.

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