I have a Compaq Evo D500 Small Form Factor desktop PC at home. It become so dear to me after 2 years of use. I like it since it comes with a 15 inch Hansol H550 TFT-LCD monitor. Compaq Evo D500 Small Form Factor is a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 Desktop PC with 256 MB RAM and 40 GB Hard Drive. It is really a space saving unit which sports a black case with silver-toned accents.

One time, we experienced an erratic power outage in AIT which usually happens when it rains hard. What happened was after the power outage the power was restored just by seconds. I thought that it might be one of those days that the PC will just boot up upon power on. But it did not turn up again as expected.

I tried many times to push the power on and rest it for a while hoping that everything will just be back to normal. I did not really help. I guess that the power supply was busted. There is this dual power boot feature for the PC which might have been broken during the sudden rush of the power back. The sensor might have been confused whether 110 volts AC or 220 volts AC was coming in.

Anyway I would like to have it fixed so I brought the power supply to Zeer, Rangsit. It stayed there for sometime but the PC repair service center informed that the broken part replacement is difficult to find. The next option was to replace the power supply.

Power supplies are the least expensive PC component and the one easiest to replace. This is not true with Compaq Evo D500 Small Form Factor because the power supply is having a non-standard 14 pin configuration as compared to 20pins and 24pins which is normally available in the market.

Since I like the PC so much I inquired about a replacement and it costs a fortune for it will be imported/ordered from the manufacturer. The price of the brand new power supply replacement was around 5,000 Baht not including tax of 7%. I decided not to buy a new one. This lead me to scout for some second hand power supply but to no avail.

I tried buying a 20 pin power supply and made some rewiring to match the schematic diagram of the power supply but it did not help too. It just makes the power go to the CPU fan and drives the CDROM drive but doesn’t show up anything on the screen.

I end up in Zeer, Rangsit buying some bare bones used CPU set similar to Compaq Evo D500 Small Form Factor but with lower specs. This time it cost me 4,000 Baht which is much lower than the brand new of 6,000 Baht. Together with my purchase of used CPU set I got a 256Mb RAM and a 30Gb hard disk and of course the most coveted Compaq Evo power supply.

Right now my Compaq Evo D500 is up and running. I bought a UPS to prevent similar events in the future. Finally, for me it’s better to buy some used PC components for some old fashioned PC’s than buying a new replacement. The place to shop is Zeer, Rangsit.