Over the past year, administrative office computers have been experiencing component failures. Your plant has a contract with a local computer shop for builds, upgrades, and repairs of all PCs. The fifteen-person administrative office spent over $3,000 last month to replace failed drives, failed video cards, and failed RAM. But the real problem is, of course, the work interruption.
Your HR manager wears a second hat as the IT manager. She told you the computer shop says the root problem is bad power. She wants it fixed.
Where should you look?
Was the contract awarded with the traditional three-bid system? The computer shop’s claim of bad power is probably correct, but not in the intended sense.
One of the ways to shave costs on computer builds is to install a cheap power supply unit (PSU). Your point of use UPS can’t protect against the gremlins this generates inside the case.
You could find the specs on a PSU from a problem computer and compare those to the latest version of Intel’s ATX12V PSU standard. Or just listen to the PSU. If you hear fan noise, it’s a cheap PSU. The solution is to spend $30 more for a solid PSU.
