I have been using a home computer since elementary school... But in all my years of home computing I have never had a power supply fail on me, and I have never had the need to upgrade a power supply. I have considered purchasing a new power supply for an older machine when I heard that they can be a cause of computer noise and I was looking for ways to cut down on my dB's - but I never did.

Unfortunately today I was forced into purchasing and installing a new power supply when my mighty server's power supply failed last night.

Due to my rush I couldn't pick and choose, nor could I order on-line and try and find the best deal. And since I am in Boise, ID I couldn't go to my favorite of PC shops, Fry's Electronics, instead I had to go to the local Comp USA. I ended up buying a 500 Watt power supply under their name brand (at least it was boxed that way). 500 Watts may have been a little overboard since the previous supply was only 300 Watts and lasted fine for several years. I actually had no idea what I currently had, and I just knew for sure I didn't was to under power my server. I am running a dual-CPU machine with 3 hard drives, 1 optical drive, and 1 disk drive. Maybe I have been pushing my 300 Watt supply's limits for some time?

The install was actually very painless and brain dead simple. Took me less than 20 minutes. And wham-o the server is back up. Enjoy.