Just realized I wasted a whole afternoon on a bad power strip

Had a customer bring in a gaming rig that would randomly shut down under load. I mean, I went through the whole checklist, you know? Ran stress tests for an hour, checked thermals, swapped the PSU with a known good unit from the bench. Spent like 3 hours on it, easy. I was about to start suspecting the motherboard when I finally, on a total whim, plugged the system directly into the wall outlet instead of the customer's fancy 'gaming' power strip. Boom, problem gone. The strip was just failing to deliver clean, stable power when the GPU spiked. It was one of those cheap, flashy ones with the blue LEDs. Felt so dumb for not checking the simplest thing first. Anyone else get tripped up by something that basic before?

2 comments

2 Comments

grace5651mo ago

Honestly, that's not a basic thing to check first at all. I've been building PCs for eight years and a bad power strip is way down the list after the PSU, motherboard, and RAM. Those fancy strips are supposed to handle the load, so it's totally fair you trusted it. Tbh, I'd have done the same exact troubleshooting steps.

danielgonzalez1mo ago

Oh man, that's the worst! You do all the hardcore troubleshooting and the villain is just a dumb strip of plastic with lights. At least you found it before swapping the whole motherboard.