Magic smoke

[isomeme]

My graphics system on the home machine finally died completely, after several months of working under threat of violence about two times out of three. So on Friday night I bought a really spiffy new graphics card, took it home, and installed it. Nothing happened. Blank black screen. And no triumphant "Windows is starting up" sound...in fact, a

Comments

[tedgill]

Power supplies are not bad -- as long as the physical form factor is the same. Beyond that mostly just plugs & screws. It can be helpful to take the old one out and bring it with you if you're going somewhere like Fry's and have a lot of choices. If it seems dicey taking the old one out you may have your answer about hiring it done -- it should be a 30-minute job.

A thing to make sure of is that you have at least as many of the necessaary types of connectors on the new one as on the old. In this day and age it isn't really likely to be a problem. As an alternative, or possibly in any case, you can take pictures of the current pwr supply and bring 'em along to assist the helpful salesperson (and yourself later).

[ardras156]

..just make sure everything is grounded appropriately. I made a bad mistake once and had lots of ozone smell and fried *everything* -- all because I was getting so excited that I got sloppy.

[fraterseraphino]

I'm with the other two: match the form factor, make sure you get everything plugged in properly, and it's pretty easy.

Though... 400W just for the video card? Jeeezus!

[isomeme]

Yeah, it boggled me, too. Admittedly, it's a relatively high-end video card; I'm tired of multiple overlaid alpha layers getting all messed up in Second Life. :)

[prjt2501]

What the others said.

The sad thing is that graphics cards have gotten so complex that they are pretty much computers in and of themselves. When they start coming with more memory than my first real desktop has as a hard drive, you know that there has been a pretty significant paradigm shift.

But really, power supplies are some of the easier things to swap out :-) Just get one of those antistatic wrist wraps with a grounding cable to make sure you don't let the magic smoke out (I love that term, we use it where I work).

[z111]

At least you know how to debug stuff

[isomeme]

Amen...as far as I'm concerned, that's the number one good thing about being an experienced techie. Even when I don't fully understand a particular area (like computer hardware), I have confidence in my ability to apply the scientific method to the situation. It's problem solving at the meta level; I know how to solve the problem of figuring out how to solve a problem. :)