Sunday prior to Amanda coming over my computer died. It just stopped powering on. Bleh. So I took it apart and dinked with it a bit - but because I had company coming over I didn't have a whole lot of time.

Monday I spent a chunk of my evening with the Junes. So there wasn't really a good solid block of time to mess with the computer then either.

Which brings us to Tuesday. I finally had some time to poke around a bit with the innards. By the looks of it - its either the plug on the power supply unit or the port on the motherboard. Of course, it could be the CPU, RAM, or other things as well. But likely its the motherboard (I'll have to try on Thursday to test with a multimeter).

So just for fun I took off the heat sink, cleaned the processor, reset the RAM, the video card, etc. Nothing. Since I don't have a spare power supply with an 8-pin plug (for ATX12V1) I can't really swap it out and test it. And honestly, Grand Rapids has a HORRID selection of computer stores. Horrid. When the cheapest place you can get computer parts is Best Buy - your city fails at this level of nerdery.

Sure - there are used computer parts stores (which are - like every used parts store I've seen - terribly over priced). By in large those places give poor advice as well - and since I know the ins and outs of my system, which I built, more intimately than they do - I'm not inclined to hassle with them.

Which leaves me with the option of ordering equipment from an online store. I usually use Newegg, though occasionally other sites (Tiget Direct) have decent prices). The problem is the waiting. I had become accustomed to having a Microcenter nearby (which, honestly, over the last few years is slowly morphing less into a build-your-own-system place & more like a Best-Buy-wannabe) when I lived in metro Detroit, and that's spoiled me.

Must learn patience....

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