Today when I turned on my PC, I notced that it was louder than normal. One of the fans sounds louder to me... seems like it is coming from the PSU.

I know it isn't the video card fan, because that is still very quiet unless I turn up the settings.

Looking in Speed Fan, all of my temps are normal and low. But it doesn't measure the heat of fan speed of my PSU.

Just a few minutes ago I was playing a PC game and my computer froze on me. The screen suddenly displayed a weird graphical artifact. A few seconds later an odd sound came out of my speakers.

I restarted the PC, and no error message came up from windows. Just the normal "would you like to start Windows in the last stable config" before the OS loaded.


Had some video card driver issues and BIOS issues before, but this seems like a different error.

And the fact that my PSU's fan is louder than before makes me think it could be the issue. Is there anyway to tell if my PSU is acting up?

I don't like the added noise from the fan either.

PSU is an Antec Earthwatts 500.

You probably already know where to look, but go here for the manual:

http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/index.php?page=ProductManuals

You'll need a multimeter to check voltage and amps tapping the psu's molex connectors while the pc is running. It's best do it under loads. Bench the cpu, then the gpu and then the hd and compare the readings to what the psu output should be. IF your motherboard has voltage diagnostic ports, you can you those instead of the molex connectors, but not all boards have those access points.

If to daunting and it can be, take out the psu and take it to your pc shop to have it checked. If bad, or going bad, it'll already be out and you can get a replacement to reinstall.

IF your going to remove it, flip the I/O switch on the back to off,"O", wait about 15 seconds. Leave I/O on back off and then push the switch to turn on the pc as you would normally do. By doing this, you discharge the caps on the board making a grounded discharge much less likely to happen.

Hope this helps.

plug_nickel (Al)