my case-included PSU fried! how many watts do i need really?!

rabitootoo

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Feb 5, 2007
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the story:

was turning on the new build and fan is working, hear the sound of the computer running, but the LCD display doesn't show the boot up screen. try it a few more times with different video cards and no video card. still, the same problem. and then like 20 seconds after its turned off (for the nth time), the power supply (we think) blew up, there was this loud pop and this light coming from the inside of the case.
We switch it to a different power supply and it boots up, but same problem. Hopefully all the other parts are okay! (please lord, my c2d..)

My brother built it and he's build 2 computers before so you would think he knows what he's doing (but thats beside the point here). Thats why we think its power supply problem and not a problem with the other main parts.

So asking the experts here to identify if its because there isn't enough current/power from the PSU thats causing the LCD display to not work? (i assure you the LCD is 100% functional). For me, i would think the power outlet supplies all the energy it needs for the lcd to work and its a graphics card problem.
or could it be some other reason???

Core to Duo e6300
Asrock 775Dual-VSTA
512mb pc3200 and 512mb pc2700 ( we did try just the pc3200 to see if it was the source of the problem. but its not)
Asus x1300 pro video card
120gb maxtor ide hard drive
aopen 16X dvd-rw
tsuname leo-46 case (psu is a goner now)

so now im planning to buy a good PSU if its the source of the problem (antec or enermax) but i need to know how many watts I need +30% on top (for future upgrades).
 
So you tried a different PSU and it boots but no image is on the screen. Have you tried multiple vid cards with the new PSU? If no video card works I'd say it's the mobo that got fried when the PSU blew. Now you know why it matters to buy a quality power supply.
 
A 400watt FSP will be more than enogh for that system and have plenty of power left should you do some upgrades like ram or a new video card.
 
It almost sounds like a bad motherboard.

Ninja edit: If you heard a pop, then most likely your power supply is toast. Did you smell something burning afterwards? What power supply was it?
 
Sound more like a bad motherboard that fried the power supply than the other way around. The OP says motherboard never worked from the first boot, even when the power supply was working. Always pays to read what the OP actually wrote before chiming in with our judgements and prejudices.
 
Sound more like a bad motherboard that fried the power supply than the other way around. The OP says motherboard never worked from the first boot, even when the power supply was working. Always pays to read what the OP actually wrote before chiming in with our judgements and prejudices.

Or it could be that a crap Deer or Raidmax or some comparable bundled in PSU was faulty from the outset and killed the mobo either from the first time it powered up or when it finally gave up the ghost and let out the magic blue smoke.
 
there was no image displaying on the LCD monitor since the first trial (pressed the on button). however fan was working and could hear the typical computer whirring sound.

After the pop and the light, did not smell anything bad though.

NOW, how do I find out if my motherboard actually died?
 
Or it could be that a crap Deer or Raidmax or some comparable bundled in PSU was faulty from the outset and killed the mobo either from the first time it powered up or when it finally gave up the ghost and let out the magic blue smoke.

Sure and lets give that crap $57 Asrock motherboard a pass here in the power supply forum LOL. :D There is a far higher probability of immediate DOA in cheap motherboards than there is in the cheapest power supply. When power supplies go they may go soon as in days or weeks. A short in the motherboard or bad PC assembly/short circuited against the case will take out both motherboard and a good or bad brand of PSU in minutes which is what OP describes.

For all we know the overload protection on the original PSU tripped and the PSU is still good.

And by the way the OP says there was no burning smell and no smoke.
 
there was no image displaying on the LCD monitor since the first trial (pressed the on button). however fan was working and could hear the typical computer whirring sound.

After the pop and the light, did not smell anything bad though.

NOW, how do I find out if my motherboard actually died?

Did you have the PC case speaker connected to the motherboard, and if so did it ever beep when you powered it on? Either with the first power supply or the 2nd.

An X1300 video card uses very little power as video cards go. It should not be an issue of too little power.
 
there was no image displaying on the LCD monitor since the first trial (pressed the on button). however fan was working and could hear the typical computer whirring sound.

After the pop and the light, did not smell anything bad though.

NOW, how do I find out if my motherboard actually died?

From what you are describing, it sounds like your motherboard is dead. If you have another LGA775 laying around, throw your parts in there and see if it boots up, if it does, you have found the problem ;)
 
Did you ever try a a PCI videocard? Bare config boot? What did the beepcode indicate was wrong?
 
Sure and lets give that crap $57 Asrock motherboard a pass here in the power supply forum LOL. :D There is a far higher probability of immediate DOA in cheap motherboards than there is in the cheapest power supply. When power supplies go they may go soon as in days or weeks. A short in the motherboard or bad PC assembly/short circuited against the case will take out both motherboard and a good or bad brand of PSU in minutes which is what OP describes.

For all we know the overload protection on the original PSU tripped and the PSU is still good.

I'd trust an Asrock before I'd trust a bundled in PSU. Let's see, a $57 part versus a $5 part...hmmmm. Get real.
 
I'd trust an Asrock before I'd trust a bundled in PSU. Let's see, a $57 part versus a $5 part...hmmmm. Get real.

Whatever -- I am really not interested in a pissing contest with you. There was no smoke and no burning smell according to OP. You don't know the make or model of power supply either or what it cost so that is just your conjecture. I do know it is not an extremely cheap case they are like 90 bucks without a PSU. There is no evidence of overheating since the thing never ran so not thermal overload. Nor have we established that the original power supply is broken. There was no smoke or no burning smell either. The difference is I am keeping an open mind and trying to help OP diagnose the problem.
 
You should test the original power supply

Since you removed the original power supply from the case, what does it say on it for brand, make or model

With it disconnected from everything and with the power switch off, take a paper clip and jumper between the green and the black pins on the 24 pin motherboard connector. Now turn on the power switch. Does the power supply fan start to spin up? That means it is working. Now if you have a voltmeter you can test the 12V 5V and 3.3V. It does not necessarily mean the PSU is good, but it will tell you if it is blown.

The Johnny Guru site has pictures.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/atx/
 
Whatever -- I am really not interested in a pissing contest with you. There was no smoke and no burning smell according to OP. You don't know the make or model of power supply either or what it cost so that is just your conjecture. I do know it is not an extremely cheap case they are like 90 bucks without a PSU. There is no evidence of overheating since the thing never ran so not thermal overload. Nor have we established that the original power supply is broken. There was no smoke or no burning smell either. The difference is I am keeping an open mind and trying to help OP diagnose the problem.

Funny, I'm speaking from experience with cheap power supplies and you cop a 'tude like I'm blowing smoke. I've seen the very thing he's describing happen with a case with a cheap bundled in PSU that was bad like I said from the outset. More than once I might add. Hell, in my newbie days I nearly suffered the same fate with a Deer PSU myself. I'd boot up my PC and 50% of the time everything would be on but I'd get no signal to the monitor and no beep from the mobo speaker. Happily my PSU didn't go *pop* and kill something before I got my head right and bought a nice 300W FSP to replace it with. Guess what, my problems went away.

If something popped on his mobo it'd be readily apparent since there'd be shrapnel in the case and a busted component on the mobo that a good looking over would easily reveal. If the PSU popped a bad cap or a faulty mosFET and sent a spike into the motherboard killing something in the process you'd be hard pressed to find it just by looking.
 
If you want to actually be helpful, rather than just tooting your own horn let's help the guy troubleshoot his problem, OK? Hmm? Since we have still not yet established that the ORIGINAL power supply is blown. The OP has come to use with a problem and I am trying to help him diagnose it.
 
I'd say that the OP has told us the PSU is in fact dead. There was a loud pop and all the parts stopped working. Hmm... OK. Then he put in another PSU and everything boots but won't post. That typically points to the original PSU being doornail dead.

As to what's dead besides the original PSU, the first step would be to get another mobo, a good quality PSU and load the rest of the parts into the mobo, hook it to the PSU and see if that solves it or if there's more elimination to go through. Depends upon the resources the OP has at his disposal. Me I'd trot down to the local B&M PC shop and see what they'd charge me to post the rest of my parts and verify that the mobo is dead if I didn't have access to another mobo to do so myself.
 
Frankly I don't even know what is the semantic meaning of boots but won't POST. Since POST comes before boot.
 
PC has all the appearance of being powered on, no post. Come up with a better way to describe it then.
 
there was no image displaying on the LCD monitor since the first trial (pressed the on button). however fan was working and could hear the typical computer whirring sound.

After the pop and the light, did not smell anything bad though.

NOW, how do I find out if my motherboard actually died?

If the CPU fan spins up and you hear it beep (1 short beep not multiple beeps) then it passed POST and the motherboard is not blown. If the CPU fan spins up but no beep, you have problems getting it to POST but motherboard is probably not blown (since the BIOS in the motherboard spins up the CPU fan). POST is power on self test that the computer does before it starts windows. So we need to know if you are hearing the fan spin up, and are you hearing any beeps. If the CPU fan never spins up and no beeps motheboard might be blown
 
no beep when powered on but the cpu fan does work/spin. so its the motherboard the problem?? or its "possible" its the motherboard?
 
Here's the scenario. A friend from work had a similar situation to yours. He bought an ASUS SLI board and 8XX series dual core CPU, X700 and DDR2 ram. He used a case with a cheap Raidmax bundled in PSU and it worked for a while but he got the cold boot bug where the PC would power up but not POST until he shut the power off on the PSU and turned it back on. After a while the PSU popped and his mobo did the same thing. After hooking the mobo to a new PSU the mobo would power up, the CPU fan would spin and the rest of the parts showed all signs of life but no POST. When the PSU died it took the mobo out with it. To me it looks like you're suffering the same fate.
 
no beep when powered on but the cpu fan does work/spin. so its the motherboard the problem?? or its "possible" its the motherboard?

Did you test the power supply using the instructions I gave? With the paper clip as a jumper across the green and the black pins of the ATX connector? If the power supply is blown then nothing will happen when you jumper it and turn on the switch. If you jumper it and turn on the switch and the fan spins up your CPU is probably OK.

It doesn't sound like a definitely blown motherboard to me yet, because the fan spins up when you power it up. The CPU fan plugs into the motherboard fan header and is controlled by the motherboard. If the motherboard was blown I would not expect the fan to come on.
 
The way I test something like this is .......
Pull the vid card and boot, do you get bios beeps for a bad vid card.
Then replace vud card and pull the memory, do you get bios beeps for bad memory.
As long as your speaker work then no beeps = dead mobo.
If you get beeps then its down to finding the bad part.

Luck ......... :D
 
Did you test the power supply using the instructions I gave? With the paper clip as a jumper across the green and the black pins of the ATX connector? If the power supply is blown then nothing will happen when you jumper it and turn on the switch. If you jumper it and turn on the switch and the fan spins up your CPU is probably OK.

It doesn't sound like a definitely blown motherboard to me yet, because the fan spins up when you power it up. The CPU fan plugs into the motherboard fan header and is controlled by the motherboard. If the motherboard was blown I would not expect the fan to come on.
It could be a bad processor, but I've only had 1 processor get fried in the 8 machines I've built. I've had 3-4 motherboards go bad and had the exact same problem rabitootoo is describing, even the processor fan spinning.
The way I test something like this is .......
Pull the vid card and boot, do you get bios beeps for a bad vid card.
Then replace vud card and pull the memory, do you get bios beeps for bad memory.
As long as your speaker work then no beeps = dead mobo.
If you get beeps then its down to finding the bad part.

Luck ......... :D
If the machine doesn't even beep, how can he hear any error codes? Most likely a bad motherboard as I stated on the first page.
 
Because a lot of boards these days have the LED readouts, not that a ~$60 AsRock does though. My money though is bad PSU, and possibly bad board (either before or after the fact doesn't really matter).

How about this scenario - bad mounting, ie: slightly off-center mounting post causing short which in turn causes debatable PSU to turn the ghost, possibly (let's hope not!) taking other components in the process? What gets me on the whole PSU thing, even though it "shows all signs of being on but no POST", is the bang the OP heard. If the motherboard had popped a cap or something you'd (as someone else said) have shards all over, or the capacitor goo all over (don't imagine a low end board would have those 'solid' caps) - you've sure couldn't miss that either. Yeah, you'd think that he'd have smelled something burning, but you never know I guess... I'd think that a bad CPU would likely show something as well (considering the bang), so removing it/the HSF to check for either a popped IHS or bad caps on the underside of the CPU may answer the problem.

Back to the PSU (@ the OP) - can you identify the PSU? Brand markings on the label, model numbers...Also how about a number under (or near) the UL cert # (the U next to reverse R) -- looks something like so - e######? (e followed by 6 #s - or does it even pretend to have such a certification?)

Suggestion (2 scenarios)

1) do a piece by piece teardown, seeing if the system will boot up, starting with the bare essentials, ie: 1 stick memory, board, CPU, GFX. If it works, then suddenly stops after a certain part, you know the problem. You may even want to take the mobo out of the case, and rest it on an anti-static bag that it should have been shipped with to take the case/mounting out of the equation.

Of course with each part you will want to do a careful inspection, front and back when possible to look for obvious signs or something popped/burned.

2) Find a friend (or barring that layout some $ at a PC shop :() that owns a S775 system. Have them test your parts piece by piece and find out what (if anything) works. Hopefully nothing is bad, or at worst, either the PSU or mobo only - sounds like the lesser of evils here if either needs to be replaced.

Yes, I'm pointing at the PSU through much of my rambling (sorry ;), but there's tons of references here at the [H] alone of cheap (esp the normally crap case inc.) PSUs being at the root of issues...With LC/Deer and Powmax sourced units being the more common among the 'crap' PSUs. The scenario of a case with a good PSU is few and far between, and a "tsuname leo-46 case" - whatever that is isn't likely to change that..Whatever the culprit is here, I'd spend another ~$50 and get the previously mentioned FSP unit; not the best around but leaps above any of the know 'avoid list' units.
 
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