I have a chassis and PSU that may be cursed. Or at least something is askew. I thought I'd describe the problems here and see if anyone has any ideas.
The chassis is an iStarUSA S-35 and power supply is a Seasonic SS-250SU (Flex ATX). I used these parts as the foundation for my server build a few years ago. That system worked great from late 2015 until we moved to a new house in mid-2017. After the move, the motherboard (ASRock E3C224D4I) would not POST. At the time, I assumed the movers mishandled the chassis... And it gave me an excuse to upgrade to an x10sdv-tln4f, so I didn't think much about it. (I have since done further troubleshooting on the motherboard, and it's definitely mostly dead. Won't POST, and the IPMI is not usable. But the CPU and memory are fine.)
That case and power supply sat unused until recently. I re-purposed them with an ASRock h110m-itx/ac and i5-6500 build for my parents. This motherboard plus CPU (and RAM) combo had been my desktop PC for the better part of a year, and before that, ran the Zoneminder system in my new house (both without issue). I tested my parents' rebuild at my house (again no obvious issues), and sent it home with them.
When they got it home, they observed the first strange thing: plugging in the HDMI to their TV temporarily killed all HDMI inputs on their TV. After a power cycle of the TV, everything seemed to work OK. I initially didn't think too much of this, and wrote it off as a fluke.
The system worked fine for a few days, maybe a week. Then, out of nowhere, their entire LAN died. They noticed it because they were watching Netflix via Roku. The Roku actually told them their Internet connection was lost. My dad power cycled his switch, and the problem remained. So then he unplugged everything from his switch. He then plugged things back in one at a time. He plugged in everything except the system I recently built for them. Everything was fine. They went back to watching Netflix. Then my dad plugged in the network cable of that new system, and almost instantly, the network died again. He quickly unplugged it, and once again everything was fine.
Taking all these things together---my server motherboard death, the HDMI issue, and the network issues---makes me think that there is something amiss with the power supply and/or chassis, like a power rail out of spec or an intermittent short. We removed the motherboard and checked voltages on all the PSU outputs, they seem reasonable. I visually inspected all the cables coming out of the PSU, thinking maybe the insulation got stripped on one of them, but I don't see any obvious problems.
It is of course entirely possible my server motherboard issue is not related to my parents' system issues. But either way, I'm at a loss of what to test next. Anyone have any thoughts on all of this?
Thanks!
Matt
Edit: Originally had wrong PSU model as PS-250SU (1U). Actual model is SS-250SU (Flex ATX). Corrected above.
The chassis is an iStarUSA S-35 and power supply is a Seasonic SS-250SU (Flex ATX). I used these parts as the foundation for my server build a few years ago. That system worked great from late 2015 until we moved to a new house in mid-2017. After the move, the motherboard (ASRock E3C224D4I) would not POST. At the time, I assumed the movers mishandled the chassis... And it gave me an excuse to upgrade to an x10sdv-tln4f, so I didn't think much about it. (I have since done further troubleshooting on the motherboard, and it's definitely mostly dead. Won't POST, and the IPMI is not usable. But the CPU and memory are fine.)
That case and power supply sat unused until recently. I re-purposed them with an ASRock h110m-itx/ac and i5-6500 build for my parents. This motherboard plus CPU (and RAM) combo had been my desktop PC for the better part of a year, and before that, ran the Zoneminder system in my new house (both without issue). I tested my parents' rebuild at my house (again no obvious issues), and sent it home with them.
When they got it home, they observed the first strange thing: plugging in the HDMI to their TV temporarily killed all HDMI inputs on their TV. After a power cycle of the TV, everything seemed to work OK. I initially didn't think too much of this, and wrote it off as a fluke.
The system worked fine for a few days, maybe a week. Then, out of nowhere, their entire LAN died. They noticed it because they were watching Netflix via Roku. The Roku actually told them their Internet connection was lost. My dad power cycled his switch, and the problem remained. So then he unplugged everything from his switch. He then plugged things back in one at a time. He plugged in everything except the system I recently built for them. Everything was fine. They went back to watching Netflix. Then my dad plugged in the network cable of that new system, and almost instantly, the network died again. He quickly unplugged it, and once again everything was fine.
Taking all these things together---my server motherboard death, the HDMI issue, and the network issues---makes me think that there is something amiss with the power supply and/or chassis, like a power rail out of spec or an intermittent short. We removed the motherboard and checked voltages on all the PSU outputs, they seem reasonable. I visually inspected all the cables coming out of the PSU, thinking maybe the insulation got stripped on one of them, but I don't see any obvious problems.
It is of course entirely possible my server motherboard issue is not related to my parents' system issues. But either way, I'm at a loss of what to test next. Anyone have any thoughts on all of this?
Thanks!
Matt
Edit: Originally had wrong PSU model as PS-250SU (1U). Actual model is SS-250SU (Flex ATX). Corrected above.
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