I consider myself pretty tech savvy – I probably would have my job if I wasn’t. So when I noticed my computer exhibiting strange video behavior a few months I was sure I could figure it out pretty quickly. But then days of troubleshooting became weeks of annoyance and weeks became months of frustration.
One day I picked up a new mainstream video card for my home desktop. It was a single-slot middle-class Nvidia card that did require a 6-pin power connection but was by no means a power hog. Almost immediately after installing the card I began to notice single-pixel video artifacts popping all over the screen. Then the artifacts turned into complete picture outages on the monitor. The screen would just go black, flash a few times and then come back with the artifacts.
I tried everything to isolate the cause. I went through driver revisions. I replaced the card. I swapped between single and dual-link DVI cables. I thought perhaps the motherboard was overheating from the added wattage and put extra fans in to increase cooling airflow. I cleaned the components of any dust. I swapped the jack that the video card used on the modular power supply. At 600 watts, I was sure that my power supply was capable of supporting the middle-class video card and my small form factor system.
For a while I just learned to accept the flaw and conceded that I would need to replace the motherboard. My budget G965 motherboard used an extremely cheap 3-phase power system and electrolytic capacitors. For the record, I will never again buy a mother board with less than 5-phase power and all solid capacitors, but in this case even these cheap components were not the cause of the video problems.
Today at work I was cranking away on my dev box and it suddenly occurred to me the most likely candidate that I had not even considered yet. The power strip I had all my home computer equipment plugged into was an ancient strip that I had had since college. I started think that maybe my five-year-old, $15 powers strip was the real component incapable of dealing with the added wattage of the video card. So I picked up a new APC power strip on the way home from work, swapped everything to the new strip and just like that – my system ran flawlessly. No artifacts and no video outages. In fact, the video quality is amazing compared to what it was on the old power strip. The colors are deeper, the contrast sharper, and the brightness increased. All because of a defective power strip.
So this brings me to a point I want to make about power conditioning. As an avid home-theater buff I’ve seen all sorts of power-conditioning products peddled for high-end electronics use. Products from Monster, Panamax, and APC are advertised everywhere from A/V forums to big box retailers like Best Buy and Fry’s. Up until now I’ve thought them to be the single biggest rip-off in the realm of consumer electronics. I won’t back off calling Monster the biggest rip-off brand in consumer electronics, but I will say that I stand corrected on the question of whether or not clean power makes a difference in audio and video quality. I’m not saying that everyone needs to have $200 power strips and stand alone home-theater power conditioning units. I’m just saying to spend the extra $20 on a higher quality power strip and rest-assured that you are seeing and hearing everything you are supposed to be.