Dell Dimension 4550 power supply

[bsm1]

I have a 3 yr old Dimension I leave on almost all the time. Last week I moved and had to shut it down. When I plugged it back in...nothing. No power to anything other than the green light on the mobo. I have another atx power supply that i plugged in (i know you aren't supposed to do that with a Dell) and it powered up fine. I put the dell ps in the other computer and it worked....so, i figured it must be something in the dell ps that was bad (and not communicating with the dell mobo) and i ordered a new ps from dell. When i put the new ps in the dell comp....nothing....same as before. I then started monkeying around and removed the mobo battery. when i replaced the batt and tried to turn on the comp...it worked and i got an error that the batt. voltage was low. so i bought a new cr1032 and everything is now working.

my question is.....will a dell not power up if the battery on the mobo is dead? or did i just get lucky and something else made contact while i was screwing around in the case?

[saphalline]

It depends on how the PSU was designed to operate. Not all PSU's behave the same - I've seen this many times with various PSU's. It could be that the Dell PSU's are designed to provide a lower voltage "power good" good signal if the mobo battery is dying, for diagnostic purposes.

Conspiracy theorists will most likely argue that Dell does this on purpose to squeeze more money out of you :rolleyes: but I find that investigating conspiracies often leads to simple incompetence. :D Dell is not always worried about their bottom line, they just get lazy or self-centered every now and then. Just like every PC OEM company.