Help: Possible Hardware Failure

[Spongebob]

I did see that my power supply was less than recommended when I put in the video card, but everything else was up to par as far as I could see.

That will definitely be an issue then. A PSU will gradually lose capability as it ages because of capacitor degradation. If it's rating when new was less then what your graphics card manufacturer suggested, it will definitely struggle now that it's older. My guess is that the 12V rail dips under load to the point where the computer becomes unstable.

Somehow I missed this crucial piece of information the first time I read through the thread.  You need to deal with this.  If you are taxing your power supply, bad things can happen and as AFTT47 said, the PS will lose capability as it gets old.

Frankly, if you are having PS problems, fan problems, graphics problems and hard drive problems, this is way over $100 territory.  It sounds like your system may be telling you its time for it to return to the great computer in the sky.  You can spend a lot of money to keep it running a year or two longer, or you could put that money into a new system.  It might be time to let it go.  And it sucks that both your WH and PC died at the same time.  Seems like this always happens.

[AFTT47]

That will definitely be an issue then. A PSU will gradually lose capability as it ages because of capacitor degradation. If it's rating when new was less then what your graphics card manufacturer suggested, it will definitely struggle now that it's older. My guess is that the 12V rail dips under load to the point where the computer becomes unstable.

Somehow I missed this crucial piece of information the first time I read through the thread.  You need to deal with this.  If you are taxing your power supply, bad things can happen and as AFTT47 said, the PS will lose capability as it gets old.

Frankly, if you are having PS problems, fan problems, graphics problems and hard drive problems, this is way over $100 territory.  It sounds like your system may be telling you its time for it to return to the great computer in the sky.  You can spend a lot of money to keep it running a year or two longer, or you could put that money into a new system.  It might be time to let it go.  And it sucks that both your WH and PC died at the same time.  Seems like this always happens.

Not so fast there, SB. The PSU could be the root of most of these problems. The best way to tell is to remove the new graphics card (assuming you have the old one or you have an integrated graphics solution). That will relieve the PSU of its burden of trying to supply more current than it is capable of. If the problems go away, you can choose to put up with the poorer video performance - at least for the short term - or upgrade the PSU.

[Spongebob]

Not so fast there, SB. The PSU could be the root of most of these problems. The best way to tell is to remove the new graphics card (assuming you have the old one or you have an integrated graphics solution). That will relieve the PSU of its burden of trying to supply more current than it is capable of. If the problems go away, you can choose to put up with the poorer video performance - at least for the short term - or upgrade the PSU.

I can't remember why he put in the new graphics card in the first place.  Was is because of the flickering monitor?  Not sure.  But yeah, if he reverts back to the old GPU and the system runs smoothly, then it's probably because he's overtaxed the PSU.

But it also sounds like the hard drive is getting noisy.  That's not an emergency but it could mean eventual death.  Honestly its been about five years since I rebuilt a desktop.  My skills are getting old.

[AFTT47]

It seems to me that Moore's law is fading. I used to build a new system every 3 years but now it's more like 7.

I'm at the point where I wouldn't even consider a mechanical hard drive unless I had some need for huge capacity. Knowing how those things work, trusting my data to them scares the crap out of me! This is especially true now where you can get 1TB in the cloud that is backed up and cost just a few dollars a month.