Wow, some bad luck.

Yeah, kinda. It was pointed out to me today, though, that components like PSUs tend to die when "given an opportunity". This particular system hadn't been rebooted in about 2 months, and even before then reboots were almost always warm or near-warm.

Once my SSD died, I had my system shut down for 6 or 7 days, with the PSU unplugged. So for all I know it may have died anytime in the last few months; it was just waiting to get cold.

Joe - No worries, for most the effort involved is not worth the money they spent on the PSU in the first place; dont blame you. Even experienced techs and EE students can have trouble rebuilding a PSU because they dont have the board logic available to em usually. Also, no disrespect, but things dont die "when given an opportunity"; they are (with a few small exceptions) digital devices and current either flows or it does not with no in-between. Of course heat, over-volting, high loads, etc ... exacerbate flaws, but under normal conditions the opportunity is usually to perform normally.

S! - WD

BTW - You, Dart and Ken King were never on my SimHQ shoot down on site in HL list. I actually found many of your articles to be thorough and good reads, ... and I am pretty da*n picky. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the kind words regarding articles.

My understanding from computer professionals (I ma not one) is that components are more likely to die when they change state. For example, the server tech for the small company at which I work recommends that we reboot our server, if necessary, on Friday afternoon, not Monday morning. Components are most likely to malfunction when being power-cycled, and thus if our server goes down on Friday afternoon we have two days to fix it before it gets in the way of office production on Monday morning. This was the concept I applied to the failed PSU.

It is what I mentioned above with specific regards to load. And yes, I agree with your server admin. For example, you come into work on Monday morning, boot up a system and suddenly dozens to hundreds of capacitors have a differential placed across them very quickly. If for some reason that load is slightly above tolerances then of course, .... failure. That being said, decent room with average temps, no super overclocking or over volting, and some fans, the expectation is for business as usual.

Thanks to this thread I was able to get my new rig up and running.

I too have the same power supply as the OP and save for the memory, my system is exactly the same.
Had the same problem....was it the boards? the CPU?

I ended up sending two of the Asus boards back and then switched to Gigabyte P67X model. Still ran into the same problem..except no posting to bios.

I thought for sure it was the CPU, until I saw this thread.

So I ended up buying a Thermaltake TR2RX, 750Watt PS. Computer booted right up and I was able to finish up my build.

Interesting...

For me the trouble continues. I got an RMAed SSD last week (the failed component that started this whole upgrade process) and the SSD that OCZ shipped me didn't work! It wasn't recognized as detected on my new system and it would prevent my old system from completing a POST.

A second RMAed SSD showed up at my office today, so hopefully the end is near. If this one doesn't work I'm gonna go looney.