Took me 4 hours to find a loose ground pin on a power supply

Had a Dell Optiplex 7040 that would randomly shut off. Checked drivers, swapped RAM, even reflowed the board. Turns out one of the pins on the 24-pin connector was slightly bent and not making contact. Three days of headache for something I couldve spotted in 5 minutes if I had just looked closer. Anyone else waste time on dumb power issues?

3 comments

3 Comments

williamm8218d ago

The loose ground pin is a classic one, it's amazing how often a tiny mechanical issue can cause such wild behavior. I've had a few machines over the years where reseating the connector fixed things you'd swear were a failing chip.

garcia.tyler18d ago

Back when I was building my first PC, I had a similar issue where the system would power on for half a second then die. I must have taken that whole thing apart three times before I realized the 24-pin connector wasn't clicked all the way into the motherboard. A little push and it booted right up. Felt like a total idiot after spending a whole evening on it.

the_mary18d ago

Not really sure it's that deep though. A loose connector usually just gives you no power or intermittent stuff, not a half-second power on and dead. I've seen that exact symptom more from a shorted motherboard standoff or a bad CPU. Could be the psu just hitting overcurrent protection from something actually wrong.