I was worried when I purchased all of my new computer equipment (from
NewEgg) that something in the bunch would be defective. Because of this concern, I chose what I felt would be quality parts:
AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Processor
DFI Lanparty UT 250 Gb Motherboard
Kingston PC3200 Ram
Antec Sonata Case w/Antec 380 watt PSU
Western Digital 120Gb SATA HD
Since then I picked up a BFG nVidia 6800 oc graphics card, and I figured I should give it some extra juice. After all, I have a bunch of optical drives and hard drives, and a bunch of extra peripherals, all taking up wattage. So I looked for a cool new power supply and found the Ultra Xconnect series 500 watt. The cables are UV coated (as is my motherboard) so I thought that it would be cool to get. Plus, it would be black, the same as the outside of my case. When my PSU arrived, courtesy of
xoxide.com, I was thrilled to put it in. So I installed it, a task my hands have not quite forgiven me for yet and left it on all night. When I awoke there was a strange odor but I figured it could have been anything. When I got home, my brother told me that he turned my comptuer off because of the smell. Well, evidently my PSU is defective and something on the inside burns. I suspect it is hot glue, as there looked to be some oozing out the side of the PSU casing. I just hope xoxide takes RMAs well - but we'll see how that goes. I think I'm going to pick up a new monitor, found
here, and probably a new Antec 480 watt. The extra 100 watts should be ample to OC my computer if I want to. Plus, it's a far more reputable company than Ultra. I was rooting for my new PSU, but evidently it was in vein. And despite their cool cables, I was unsatisfied with how bulky the connectors were.
