It was plugged into the motherboard and "on" when I tested. So I'd hope that would be enough load.

I've found somewhere fairly local that sells the same motherboard, it's difficult to find boards with 6 sata sockets these days. Really don't want to have to buy all 3 parts just to check which is dead :((

Guess it's fucked then.

Proper fucked.

Is everything electric fucked, and not just your sockets?

This must be dead server day. Mine just went.

He's doing that thing where he bashes our sockets, again.

NJ!

Rubbish. What's happened?

Dead drive. It's been running for weeks (maybe longer) from memory. I'm been able to vnc to it, use the console for ssh and open a file in geany. Anything else it was throwing "file system read only" errors. When I tried to reboot today, bios shows nada for hdd. It's MrsD.'s old refurb HP SFF desktop (with original, 20GB drive) that she had for a few years and I set it up as a server about 4-years ago.

Important stuff backed up?

I learnt my lesson a while back and I'm glad to use CrashPlan

This server had nothing important on it. I've only used it to ssh from plus some light webdev for at least a year.

Another try this morning before I was going to take it all back to the place I bought the parts and it's working again. I certainly don't trust that PSU so I'll be buying a new one.

You bought said parts fairly recently?

April 2015. So not too long ago, but well outside a 12 month window if that's what guarantee I have. The PSU has a 3 year warranty though, but how I go about proving an intermittent fault, I don't know. For around £40 I don't think it's worth the hassle of trying to claim.

Bummer. I started shopping for a replacement drive and noticed I can get a 128G solid state for about the same as a 500G spinner (which capacity might be nice to have, but I sort of don't really need atm).

Tempting...

Also tempted with an SSD for the server boot drive. As well as for my laptop and normal PC. Also tempted with a new laptop.

The drive is definitely dead. I stuck a usb adaptor on it. First try I could hear it spinning up, but it was not recognized by my main pc. Then it just stopped spinning. I remembered why I'd only been using the server as an ssh and scanner slave over vnc: it's an HP dx5150, and not the dc5750 as I'd hoped (MrsD's replacement model). SATA1, DDR1... not really worth any upgrades. I can get a 160GB pull drive for $16. That's about what it's worth. Ho hum. I do have an athlon x2 that I might stick in it to replace the 3200 x1. No harm in that I guess, if it posts.

My issue with old computers like that is the power consumption - that's if energy use is a concern to you. Looks like the AMD 64 3200 in that system possibly has a TDP of 89W depending on the generation. Though if you have the parts spare I guess it's still cheaper to spend that small amount more on electricity for a couple of years than buy something new and low-power.

We don't pay separate electric, it's included in the rent.

Well in that case, who cares!