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Mint causing PSU failure? (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 days ago by mr_account@lemmy.world to c/linuxquestions@lemmy.zip
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So I've dabbled with trying out Linux over the past 10ish years, but this past year I've been trying to commit to the transition away from Windows entirely due to the sunsetting of Win10. The computers I own are fairly old (newest one being a laptop from 2018), since money has been very tight for a while, so I figured they would get some revitalization from using an OS that wasn't so bloated. However, the 2 old PCs and 1 Chromebook I installed Linux Mint onto all had their PSUs fail within the span of a month, which is making me paranoid.

Both PCs were really old (2013) and were what I had for basic steam gaming until I got a Steam Deck last year, but I put Mint v21 Xfce on them for basic web browsing and programming (v22 had too many issues with the old Nvidia graphics card). The Chromebook was from around 2015 and I gave it to my parents to use since all they needed was something to browse the web and check their finances. I put Mint Cinnamon v22.1 on it just a couple months back. Mint seemed to run really well on all 3 computers for several months, they weren't overused/overclocked, and weren't kept on or in hibernation for more than a day. Then without warning, one by one they all just refused to boot up entirely. Pressing the power buttons does nothing, not even a brief flicker of life.

Does anyone else have experience with this kind of thing happening to them? I'm not looking for a fix to these computers since I'm pretty sure they're all completely dead, but all of this happening in such a short timeframe feels like it's not just a coincidence. Is this a common problem with Mint that I just didn't see when looking for a distro to use on old hardware? Honestly just baffled.

I still have one laptop left that's running win10 that I'd like to get transferred over to some version of Linux soon, but this experience has made me very hesitant. I really need this laptop readily available for studying and job hunting, but I'm quite aware of the security risks the longer I use win10.

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[–] muhyb@programming.dev 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm using Linux for more than a decade (including Mint) and never had a hardware failure because of it, had 2 GPUs died on me because of power shortages though.

Anyway, I believe those are more likely a coincidence because older they get it's more likely they die because of age, especially for PSUs. And PSUs die almost without any indications. However 3 PC is a lot, but I would suspect unstable electricity before that.

It's also possible that motherboard is dead instead of PSU. And if they're laptops, I think this is a better possibility. It's easier to check if they are not laptops.

[–] mr_account@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yea, I'm not ruling out a string of bad luck just causing all of the really old hardware to fail at the same time. As for your idea of unstable electricity, both PCs were plugged into a surge protector (not simultaneously), and the laptop was plugged into a completely separate surge protector in a different room. Doesn't seem likely, but at the same time I'm not particularly knowledgeable on that front

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 1 points 6 days ago

I see, it's less likely if there is a surge protector (unless surge protector is faulty or older than 5 years). Worth a shot since that happens here a lot.

I saw the FFmpeg test as someone suggesting. That's a good advice. Addition to that run powertop to see how is the power consumption. There is also Phoronix Test Suite that you can use for different benchmarks, might be helpful.

[–] sga@piefed.social 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

ideally, os should not affect power supply. there is a potential that your os (well not os, but os having poor drivers causing hardware) drawing a lot of power, or possibly your system is unstable (in sense of frequently fluctuating power draw). If you think the os is to blame, find some stable taxxing benchmark (lets say ffmpeg transcode and run something for hours take a video, and then take some taxxing codec like av1 and write to /dev/null (so storage is not filled)). if the performance is stable (for ffmpeg transcode, it shows a speed parameter) and your power supply is not die-ing (i have at this moment forgotten how to spell present continous of die), then your power supply is fine, and your memory is fine too (another thing that shows abrupt behaviour). if performance is fluctuating or severely throttling, or something exotic, then maybe your setup has something broken. now swap some hardware or os, and replicate. you will likely find the problem.

[–] mr_account@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Interesting, and ty for the troubleshooting tips. I'll definitely keep this in mind as something to monitor when transitioning over the os on my laptop

[–] ignotum@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That's strange, can't say i've experienced that myself before, how do you know the PSU is the issue?

I assume you've tried holding the power button, or unplugging/replugging the power? I have had machines refuse to wake from sleep, appearing completely dead until i forcibly shut it down and then start it again

I've also had issues with power saving features, but i doubt it would be able to overload the powersupply, especially on a laptop

I have a bunch hardware that's probably 15+ years at this point, it's been running for a few years and the only hardware failure i've had so far was a mechanical harddrive wearing out

[–] mr_account@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I guess I could be jumping to conclusions with the laptop, but I did a test with the PCs and I'm pretty sure it's the PSU. Both PCs are identical because my friend and I used the same list of parts to build them over a decade ago. Mine died a little bit after installing Mint, and since my friend has a more recent build, he let me salvage his PC for parts. First thing I did was see what happens if I just put his PSU in my dead PC and it immediately booted back up. However, I was concerned that maybe some other bit of hardware in my PC caused the PSU to fail, so I just put my hard drive and the working PSU back into my friend's PC and used it as normal. About a month after that, it died the same way.

As for the other things you've suggested, I did try all of those tests to no avail, as well as cleaning/dusting all of the internals and connection ports with compressed air. I got nothing, which is why I figured I'd ask here.