Hi, all. I've done a few searches on these boards and haven't found the answer yet, so hopefully this isn't a repeated question. I have 6 DIY computer systems here. All run athlon xp 1800 CHIPS. Most of the computers have 80gb hard drives, 256 mb ram. I know, not the most sophisticated systems, but we use them in our office for word processing and database entry. I don't know what kinda of motherboard we're USING, but sound and video are OEM by the motherboard.

My problem is that i have gone through over a dozen power supplies in the past year and a half. Each one has burned up-- yes, you could smell it and see the open part of the fan discoloring from the heat. At first, as I hadn't replaced that many power supplies before, I thought possibly we were undersized on the power supply. We were using 230's before. Now we're up to 380's and they're still burning up. We've used powmax and chiefmax respectively.

Does anyone have any clue why this can be happening? None of the computers are being left in CONFINED or air-restricting places. Any help would be appreciated.

Thankshow many FANS are inside the PC?I have the cooling fan for the processor, that's all.get more fans. as many as you can fit inside. see if problem persists. Inside of computer is probably too hot.Install a case fan (for air intake) in each computer. Check out Antec PSU's, which generally have dual cooling fans in the PSU. Inexpensive PSU's, regardless of their rating, are poorly built and do not always provide the rated wattage. As a PSU heats up, its ability to provise the necessary current decreases. The Antec is stable over a wider temperature range is unlikely to fail unless it becomes extremely hot. I have an Antec 350 watt PSU that runs 24/7 for the last 4 years and not yet had a failure. The machine it is in is a loaded tower with with 3 HDD, 3 CD drives, zip and floppy, dual nic, agp video card, modem, plus some external peripherals.Hmm... so the case is getting too hot and burning up the power supplies? Does this mean that the cases we picked were junk? I built my first computer 7 years ago. This system is a whopping 800mhz p3 with cdrw, dvd rom, 2 40gb wd hard drives and 512 mb ram. I have never had an issue with this power supply, although it is a full ATX as opposed to the micro atx that i'm using on these other systems. Is the problem that I should not have gotten micro atx? that I got the wrong case? the system ran fine for about a year on powmax 230's before it bruned up, so it seems odd that the chiefmax's rated at 380w, even if underperforming, would still be having this issue.

I just need to check all my bases before I TAKE this to the bossman. I appreciate all the help...

Forgot this:

http://www.1coolpc.comit means you need more fans inside the cases. [highlight] (see 2k_dummy's post above)[/highlight]

It has to be a heat problem. A high quality PSU is essentil, as that is the heart of the computer. The CPU and other items are the brain and internal organs. Without a good heart, they just don't function properly. The fans are like air conditioning to the computer. Anything (including humans) will fail under excessive heat conditions.Thanks! This link isn't working, but I'll figure it out. I appreciate the help.