corsair cx430 sudden power loss

[benareeno]

This seems to happen once or twice if I cold boot the system from full power off and it pretty much happens every time I cold boot. Also, it seems to happen when I wake the pc after putting it to sleep for a while..seems to happen every 2 or 3 times. So, does this mean I should either junk it or look into recapping it? It has plenty of power for me and it's really quiet...so I do like it.

What are your thoughts?

[dmill89]

Those are CWT built units with Samxon and Teapo caps, so bad caps would definitely be a strong suspect. As for recapping vs. replacing, from a pure cost standpoint, recapping an entry level unit like that one is generally not really worth it, especially if you don't already have the caps on hand (figure $15-20 worth of caps with shipping, plus whatever you value and hour or two of your time, and that there is no guarantee that new caps will actually fix it on a unit that could be replaced for ~$40), but of course many of us choose to do this for "fun".

[stj]

try warming it up with a hair dryer or fan heater before turning on.
if the fault goes away replace all the small electrolytics

[benareeno]

I am one of those who doesn't mind wasting his time on a repair...I do get a strange satisfaction from it, for sure. I will start with the electrolytics and see how I do. It seems logical...Once the computer warms up, in never really resets itself. Only after it has gotten cold do I encounter this problem.

Now I need to find a list of caps to buy...is this easy to do? Or do I have to yank it out and take an inventory?

[redwire]

CX430 has been around many years (15?) and there are different quality builds. There is a V1 and V2 Channel Well version.
Take it apart, blast it out with compressed air and make a list of the caps and their sizes/values. I haven't seen a cap list posted for it.
Myself, I got lazy and bought a Seasonic on sale, it's got a 7 year warranty. Check your CX warranty period too.

[sam_sam_sam]

Now I need to find a list of caps to buy...is this easy to do? Or do I have to yank it out and take an inventory?

I caution you about removing all the capacitors with out marking them somehow so that when you put the new capacitors on the board the right place on the board so it will be able to function properly and what ever you do not rely on your memory when all capacitors look the same the reason I know I did this way once and it was a big mistake

[dmill89]

Now I need to find a list of caps to buy...is this easy to do? Or do I have to yank it out and take an inventory?

It depends on how visible the caps are. I've never had one of these specific units myself, but from the pics I've seen in reviews it doesn't look like it should be too hard to see most of the values (obviously you'll need to remove the top case, you may or may not need to pull the board out of the lower case).

I caution you about removing all the capacitors with out marking them somehow so that when you put the new capacitors on the board the right place on the board so it will be able to function properly and what ever you do not rely on your memory when all capacitors look the same the reason I know I did this way once and it was a big mistake

^This, when I recap a PSU I generally take a piece of blank printer paper and draw a diagram of all the cap locations, polarity, and values to keep track of all of them.

[benareeno]

Thanks for all the advice, I will price out the caps and decide what I shall do. Definitely would love to fix it...would be fun.