mos6507's Blog - The Madness of PCs

[RSS Bot]

I was a little hesitant to try building my own PC. Every time I do it, I run into some snag somewhere, but this was the only way for me to really be choosy about components. The ASUS H57 motherboard has a lot more slots in it than the Gateway and Dell systems I considered. Anyway, sure enough, I've hit a snag. Because graphics cards keep sucking more juice, the ATX power supply standards have changed. All this in the last few years apparently. So I go down to the electronics store and buy the only power supply they stock. But even that seems to be short by two 12V rails. The board doesn't seem to want to power up. So what I really need is a EPS12V supply. Nevertheless, I'm half expecting that when the new supply comes in from Newegg that the board will still fail to power up, causing me to go to the geek squad or something and have them work with it. You know, no matter how long I work with PCs, I just do not enjoy working under the hood like this. I should have bought an iMac or another Mini and just put windows on via bootcamp. But I wanted something that would be expandable, and something that would work well for video editing and modern PC games. So now I have to pass through Dante's inferno before I'm up and running.

 

It's really amazing how 30 years of legacy has come to this. The rat's nest of cabling inside a PC case. Leads that go from the power supply, the drives, the motherboard, the fans. All different form factors. And that's even before you venture into BIOS pages or install the OS. I guess I'm getting old but I just don't have the patience for this shit anymore. If the new power supply comes in and it still fails to turn over, I totally am going to want to drop-kick the thing against the wall.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=blog&blogid=103&showentry=6774