-- Posted by Macropiper at 12:47 am on April 22, 2007 Well, I got a new hard drive today, and got a bit worried about the power supply in my computer, seems I need to upgrade and the 5 volt rail, doesn't run at 5 volts any more, even after the hard drive is removed, so my computer was already a bit marginal in that regard. Anyhow, I tried upgrading last year to some 500W Antec Truepower modular power supply, the first one blew, the second one made burning smells after a month or so, so out it went and back to the 450 watt one I went. Anyhow, it also seems that the reason it blew was because the area I live in has dodgy power, its probably doubly bad where I live because my mum has a kiln for firing pottery, and when it goes, all the lights in the house noticeably dim, and it kind of pulses in terms of drawing power, creating a kind of flickering effect.