Was it true?

[Carl Lawrence]

Hello guys,

As some may know that I had to send my PC back to PC World recently, now I have it got back. I am just wondering if I had overloaded the power supply and somehow destoryed the motherboard as well. Was this true? I have no problems now.

 

[Zepher]

power surge can do that.

 

[Andacar]

Can't say without looking at it. A few things to check:

1. Do you have a surge protector, or preferably a battery backup power supply?
2. What's the wattage rating on the power supply?
I can tell you this: there's no way I know of to just intensely use a computer and blow the motherboard or power supply unless it's a crap machine to begin with. One piece of advice for the future: don't buy computers online, especially if it's a high end machine. Yes, that’s right. Go to an old fashioned, uncool dealer. If you buy it from a dealer you can get it fixed in hours. With an online machine you have to box it back up, get an RMA from somebody who barely speaks English, wait for years, get it back, set it back up, pray they fixed it right, etc... I still don't understand why people think it's more "convenient" to buy one online.

 

[Zepher]

Can't say without looking at it. A few things to check:

1. Do you have a surge protector, or preferably a battery backup power supply?
2. What's the wattage rating on the power supply?
I can tell you this: there's no way I know of to just intensely use a computer and blow the motherboard or power supply unless it's a crap machine to begin with. One piece of advice for the future: don't buy computers online, especially if it's a high end machine. Yes, that’s right. Go to an old fashioned, uncool dealer. If you buy it from a dealer you can get it fixed in hours. With an online machine you have to box it back up, get an RMA from somebody who barely speaks English, wait for years, get it back, set it back up, pray they fixed it right, etc... I still don't understand why people think it's more "convenient" to buy one online.

Initial cost is usually cheaper buying from an online boutique shop.
Around here, there used to be tons of shops to buy computers and parts from, now there's barely a handful of shops, and they are a bit pricey.
I had to fix my friends machine that got struck by a static discharge from a lightning strike in his backyard.
Took out the motherboard but everything else was fine.
Bought a motherboard, CPU, and ram since I didn't know what part was bad at the time, and with the agreement with the shop that I could bring back the CPU and Ram if we didn't need it.
The parts averaged $50 more each vs online stores, but he does graphic design for a living and needed his machine up and running asap so he paid the premium to get it up and running that day.

 

[Andacar]

I realize that initial cost is higher with a dealer. To clarify, my thought is that especially for a mission critical machine (like mine) the 20-50 odd bucks you save in initial purchase is more than made up for by the incredible hassle factor of dealing with the massive and faceless online computer retailers. I just had to finish a huge project for a local small budget film. I did 2½ minutes of animated opening titles at 2k resolution uncompressed. The director was constantly breathing down my neck, screaming, “Where is it!!? Where is it!!!?” I had a breakdown and the dealer got it working again with less than 24 hours turnaround. If I had been forced to send the thing off to some place in China I’d have lost the job for sure. I know for a fact that no big studio in its right mind would use computers bought online. They have 24/7/365 contracts with support centers. I'd imagine it was the same for CAD folks, web designers, etc.

If it’s just a typical web surfing, porn and music downloading game machine, then sure, get it wherever is cheapest. But if you depend on the machine for your livelihood (I do animation when I can catch a job and also teach online) then I strongly suggest you have somebody local you can take it to.

Andacar

 

[Zepher]

the savings isn't usually $20-50, it's in the hundreds. Just the 3 parts we bought were $150 more locally than online. Add in the rest of the parts and it's easily over $200, which is a large chunk of change when you are buying an under $1000 machine.

I personally wouldn't buy a an online boutique built machine since I would not want to have to send it in.

One of my clients is a Sign shop and I upgraded their machine about 3 years ago. I built 2 identical machines so if one crapped out for some reason they can unbox the other one and be up and running in no time, then when I get there I can fix the broken one.
They are 75 miles away so it takes me almost 2 hours to get there so I recommended building 2 identical machines to limit the downtime.
They haven't needed the spare machine yet, knock on wood.