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That's a very nice lifetime for a build; you should be proud. Though I can't imagine using a 5400 RPM HDD today. 7200 RPM or bust, I'm spoiled… > When was the

That's a very nice lifetime for a build; you should be proud. Though I can't imagine using a 5400 RPM HDD today. 7200 RPM or bust, I'm spoiled… > When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away? Ugh, unfortunately I'm at "throw it away", basically. My current build, built in 2011, won't stay powered up. It gets anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours (and sometimes days) and then inexplicably power-cycles. A tech thought it was bad RAM, but the DIMM he pulled checked out under memtest, and removing it doesn't change the symptom. Given the behavior, it's probably one of the PSU or mobo, the problem is just which. I lack a competent tech or the parts to hot-swap with. The problem with replacing the mobo is that it then causes the replacement of the CPU and RAM, as the sockets for both have since changed. (Unless I find an older mobo, but it's 11 y/o, so probably not.) What with the chip shortage, it's going to be fun to find parts. I'll probably jump to AMD, too.) The mobo (an ASRock) is not a high quality board for what it should have been, and in addition to the power cycling problem had other flaws since day 1. The PSU impacts the case fans. Newegg regened on the GPU so it never got that. And now it doesn't turn on. I will probably salvage the HDD in it (its on its second), and … I don't really know what else I can take. The DVD drive, I suppose.

kaetemi 4y ago
I had random freezes and power cycles until... redoing the electric wiring in the house! My guess is the washing machine, which was down the same line as my office (in addition to our main supply line being extremely undersized), was causing some spikes on the supply voltage.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  That's a good find! I know someone who worked on mainframes with wire wrapped backplanes back in the day. He was the customer support technician sent out when all others failed. One time, he discovered that a customer's reliability problems correlated to folk riding the elevator before and after lunch.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  One of the offices at my old employer had terrible power. They relied on UPS with line conditioners for their PCs.
sgtnoodle 4y ago
It's possibly just some electrolytic capacitors on the main board or PSU that have gone out of spec or completely failed. Look around for capacitors with a popped out top. Finding a motherboard with an 11 year old socket shouldn't be hard, unless it was a really obscure socket. Looking up the Intel socket I had in 2011, for example, yields plenty of options on Newegg.
johnklos 4y ago
You do realize that the only benefit by having a higher rotational speed is improved rotational latency, right? A 2 terabyte 5400 RPM drive is going to transfer data much faster than a 36 gig 10,000 RPM drive.

kaetemi 4y ago

I had random freezes and power cycles until... redoing the electric wiring in the house! My guess is the washing machine, which was down the same line as my office (in addition to our main supply line being extremely undersized), was causing some spikes on the supply voltage.

sgtnoodle 4y ago
That's a good find! I know someone who worked on mainframes with wire wrapped backplanes back in the day. He was the customer support technician sent out when all others failed. One time, he discovered that a customer's reliability problems correlated to folk riding the elevator before and after lunch.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
One of the offices at my old employer had terrible power. They relied on UPS with line conditioners for their PCs.

sgtnoodle 4y ago

It's possibly just some electrolytic capacitors on the main board or PSU that have gone out of spec or completely failed. Look around for capacitors with a popped out top. Finding a motherboard with an 11 year old socket shouldn't be hard, unless it was a really obscure socket. Looking up the Intel socket I had in 2011, for example, yields plenty of options on Newegg.

johnklos 4y ago

You do realize that the only benefit by having a higher rotational speed is improved rotational latency, right? A 2 terabyte 5400 RPM drive is going to transfer data much faster than a 36 gig 10,000 RPM drive.