[IWE] Power Supply question
D. Scott Katzer
iwe@warhead.org.uk
Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:10:00 -0400
Hi Jay,
Jay Burns IV wrote:
> Greetings, wizards-
>
> I have a friend who has a Compaq thing of some kind. It's older and it
> steadfastly refuses to tell anyone what model it is All it says on the
> front is"Compaq"...no "Deskpro" or "Presario" or "Evo" or anything like
> that. Nothing on the roughly half dozen stickers with innumerable
> barcodes o the back of it, either. Its all black, in a what they call
> their Compact Workstation Tower (CWT) case. Has both a CD and DVD
> reader/writer on it, and a (gasp) 5-1/2" floppy drive, too!
>
> And it doesn't work.
>
> At least, not for very log...You power it up, and it runs for about a
> minute, just enough to get XP-Home to display the login screen (she has
> logins enabled, for reasons that I will never know, and am probably
> better not knowing...). Then there appears to be an abrupt loss of
> power...but not all power. The CPU fan stops running, the video card
> halts (driving the monitor to black). But the LEDs on the network port
> (it has integrated networking) continue to flicker, and the power supply
> fan continues to run.
This doesn't sound like a power supply problem to me. It sounds like
the CPU is shutting down - maybe due to overheating? But maybe the +12V
and +5V rails of the supply are Ok, but the +3.3V has died.
> I suspect there is a power supply problem. I haven't check ed the power
> leads yet tot he MB...I'm going to do that later tonight.
An alternative is to get a utility that reads the power supply voltages
in Windows, but they're usually chipset-specific. SpeedFan may work
though - http://www.almico.com/sfscreenshots.php If you can keep it
running long enough, then it might tell you the voltages without needing
a meter, etc.
> However, I
> had it open on got the model number off the power supply. It's a
> HP-P251GF3. Finding a new one of these isn't easy, and the way too
> expensive (between US$200 and 250; you can just about replace the entire
> machine for that). In poking around the interwebs, I found that HiPro
> makes a similar supply, the 244166-001. Much of the literature states
> that this power supply will "just drop in " to a number of Compaq PCs,
> mostly Presarios. That's great, except that I may not have a Presario...
As long as the power connectors are the same (20 pins vs 24 pins vs 20+4
pins) and the power rating is the same for the +3.3V, +5V, +12V, -12V
rails, and the layout is the same (fan location, power cord location,
switch location), then it really shouldn't matter.
> So the question I'm asking o you is, does anyone know if a HiPro
> 244166-001 is a direct replacement forthe massively overpriced
> HP_P251GF3? I'm pretty sure they are compatible from a plug
> perspective...but I'm not sure the mounting holes and al the physical
> interfaces will line up (you know how Compaq is regarding puting
> standard things in non-standard places on teir boxes...simply to insure
> that you'll have to buy their overpriced crap when a part fails).
>
> Any info would be appreciated.
A guy at work was in a similar situation. He had a Presario that had a
dead PS and he wanted to resurrect it. I think I became convinced that
there was no difference between a $20 NewEgg supply and the $200 exact
replacement he found somewhere. But he knew the machine number, etc. I
think he spent the extra "to be sure", but I wouldn't have.
I would take a look at this 300W HiPro (out of stock, unfortunately)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817174026
and this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817338005
and this
http://www.atxpowersupplies.com/250-Watt-Power-Supply-Compaq-244166-001.php
and see if there's anything obviously different between them.
HTH a bit. Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
>
> thanx-
> jb4