Widespread Dell PSU Failures - Optiplex GX270's

[flyinghaggis]

We've been having loads of problems with PSU failures on our Dell Optiplex GX270's. The general fault is that the power LED flickers orange and the unit wont power on 75% of the time after shutting it down. Power Cylcing it several times in a row temorarily resolves the problem but it always re-occurs. We've had to replace about a dozen of the 90 PC's we bought 2 years ago (12% failure rate in 2 years). This is also a concern because we've out of warranty in another years time and based on the current failure rate we'll be lucky if we've any left running by the time they get to be 5 years old!

I've been hunting online and it seems be caused by a capacitor fault in the PSU units so even though i've no definite proof i'm near certain it's a manufacturing fault caused by the faulty capacitors that were prolific a couple of years ago.

Has anyone else on here had a similar problem? I'm away to speak to our account manager about the issue as I feel it's a manufacturing/design fault that will ultimately affect all of these PCs and that Dell should replace all of the PSU's in the affected models?

[ChrisC]

There's whole threads on capacitor problems, and yes.

http://edugeek.net/index.php?name=Fo...ewtopic&t=3382

http://edugeek.net/index.php?name=Fo...ewtopic&t=3814

To list just two...

Chris

[flyinghaggis]

Cheers for the quick reply,

We'll give our account manager at Dell a call and see what we can work out. We've been experiencing on average a failure a week since we've got back from the summer hols because of this issue and I dont want to have to be on the phone to Dell tech support for several hours every week arranging replacement and running diagnostics for a known issue. That and we'll be out of warranty soon!

I'll let you know what their response is :?

[flyinghaggis]

It's looking like Dell's reply is just to ignore us an hope we go away :?

We're seriously considering moving away from Dell as we're looking at a 25% failure rate in 3 years and Dell aren't interested in doing anything about it except getting us to arrange warranty call-out every time one fails. This takes several hours as everytime time you call you get put on hold, then have to go through the same checklist, diagnostics to get them to send out a replacement PSU! Our account manager's (we've had several) only ever seem to be interested in speaking to you when you're purchasing stuff from them. Whenever you've a problem or ask for information they just aren't interested.
Our warranty runs out in 6 months time and then we're going to be left having to buy PSU's in bulk for what's clearly a manufacturing issue that Dell wont awknowledge. We run our PCs on a 5 year refurb plan and based on the current rate of failures we'll be lucky if we've 25% still working by then.

To say I'm hacked off is an understatement..........

[GrumbleDook]

I am speaking with Dell on Tuesday. I will raise these threads with them and ask for a comment on the failure rate.

[petectid]

Unfortunately dealing with large dealers like Dell can be a problem, you begin to feel that your custom is not worth their effort, as your purchases are small in comparison to larger organisations. All my Dell kit has been bought through the local authority this gives us another avenue to take if we have problems.

What Tony has suggested is a good idea as they will not want to see their name dragged through the mud in public, so by drawing their attention to this can only be good. Had similar issues once with Compaq as it was then, I had 48 drive failures in the space of a month or two, they to wanted me to report each one individually. Talking with one of their support engineers made a difference as he persuaded his boss to take the matter up and all drives were replaced under warranty. I hope you get a satisfactory solution to your power supply issues.

[flyinghaggis]

Cheers for the replies,

Like you say I think that because they're a large company whenever we've got a problem it always ends up being escalated to a level it shouldn't have to reach just because it's difficult to get to speak to an individual who's actually willing to take on a problem and has the authority to make a call regarding issues like this. It's just really frustrating as you feel like nobody's listening when you contact Dell for help regarding a problem.
I've spoken with our account manager since this thread started in September and we were told that we hadn't hit the failure rate required for a bulk replacement (currently we're at 17%). She wouldn't actually give me a percentage required to action this though but if anyone knows the magic number it would be useful to have at hand!

[goodhead]

we've have about 100 sx 270s
i think we've had 50% fail.

We got so fed up of support calls every week we hasttled dell again and again. eventually they agreed to replace the boards on them.

This was great that they did this how ever it still took them ages as dell wont send out more then 3 boards at a time. so for about 3 weeks we had an engineer here every day changing boards.

[GrumbleDook]

If you speak to your external rep (don't know what area you are from so I can't say which person to speak to) it is possible for a bulk load to be sent to you and the engineer just turfs up and stays there to replace as many as he can ... or you can replace them yourself.

It takes some negotiation but you can get the above.

Considering we haven't had a single board or PSU fail in our SX 270s I am happy ... we have had some issues in other ones (popped caps etc) but that is all resolved too.

The main issue we have had was a batch of problem Latitude 110Ls ... but we have worked through that too.

[Face-Man]

We have had about 20% motherboard and psu failure. I spoke to Dell about as one sytem was on it's last day of warrenty. They said that the motherboards would be covered anyway into 2008 if it was a capacitor issue. mind you he also tried to fob me off with other company have the same problem it just a bad batch of capacitors line...

[FN-GM]

Well just keep claiming they are breaking like one or two a week even if there not and keep them spare when the warranty runs out.

[Zorro_Slot]

In my last job we had a similar problem, mobos kept dying. BIOS log showwed thermal error each time. Had 50% fail in a few months. Took months and loads of hassling to get them to replace the remaining boards -they did it four boards per day over several days!!! This is why I will not buy PCs from Dell anymore.

[K.C.Leblanc]

At my old school we had a very high fail rate on Optiplex 270s (luckily we only had about 8 of them). Everytime we had one go Dell would make us jump through hoops, despite the fact we knew there was an issue with them.

My impression is they can't tell which machine are effected from the serial number, the need the serial no of the PSU.

[j17sparky]

We had *lots* of GX150s, GX270s etc and *every* single ones PSU blow *atleast* once, more like 2 or 3 times each.

We had a problem with dell TFTs. Again *every* single one developed the same fault, and so did every replacement.

Dells stance on this was it was our fault as "they had not had *any* reports of them failing apart from from us"

Needless to say we dont buy from dell anymore.

[speckytecky]

Not my experience of Dell. Our Dell server ran out of guarantee September 06 - it's developed faults twice since then and Dell have been brilliant in getting it back to life.