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Power supply failure damage? HELP

M

MrXerxes

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 10, 2005
Messages
102
I just got a new X1900XTX graphics card to replace my 7800 GT. I swaped the cards, turned on the system and was greeted by what sounded like a blow torch roaring, and a bright white flame inside the powersupply. After a second, smoke began to pour out.

After cursing for a bit I got in the car, drove to the store and picked up a new 750W Thermaltake Tough Power supply. Got back, hooked it all up, made sure the PSU was switched on, etc. The system does not power on at all. After reseating the CPU, the RAM, the graphics card, all to no avail, I am stumped. My question - is it likely that whey my Antec powersupply burst into flames it fried my gear? Of importance to note ist hat the green power LED on my ASUS motherboard is illuminated with this new powersupply.

My system:

Pentium D 930
ASUS P5DL2
ATi Radeon X1900XTX
2GB DDR2
3 HDs
Antec True Power 550W power supply.
 
I think that LED is just like a yes I have power kind of thing.

Make sure you've hooked up all the power jacks, esp the cpu jack. I think thats the most overlooked one. Failing that I think you need to really consider that your mobo's fried.

Any chance you can try the psu on another mobo?
 
dying psu can take allot of hardware with it... but yeah, make sure you have all additional power leads plugged to the mobo.. and if pressing the pwr button doesn't do anything - try shorting pwr pins with a screwdriver... if nothing happens - take out the mobo and see if there are any visible burns...
 
Your problem happened when you connected the X1900 board. Try with the X1900 disconnected, there may be a short on the graphics card. Inspect everything for burn marks.
 
breakpoint said:
Your problem happened when you connected the X1900 board. Try with the X1900 disconnected, there may be a short on the graphics card. Inspect everything for burn marks.
Click to expand...
An excellent idea, if it's not welded in place. :eek:
 
I realize the flame came from the PSU, but I'd be more inclined to think the video card was somehow defective and this shorted out the PSU.

I mean, think about it... The PSU was working fine with a 7800GTX. The X1900 doesn't take that much more power under load, and you weren't under load. You were just trying to power it on! So the load ins't going to be even more than a measly Ti4200! :D

All of the sudden the video card is switched out and the PSU blows up? I call bad video card.

And it's true that the light only lights up if the board is getting 5VSB from the PSU. If the video card was bad enough to fry a PSU, it's not going to post now. And if the video card was bad enough to take out the 12V rail of a PSU, causing it to explode, I'm sure everything in your rig that requires 12V is likely dead too.
 
correct me if I'm wrong, but I have believed that the POST sequence is one of the most demanding in terms of power
 
J Macker said:
correct me if I'm wrong, but I have believed that the POST sequence is one of the most demanding in terms of power
Click to expand...

Not really, the videocard generally uses the most power in a system, and your GPU hardly uses any power when in POST. During a game or 3D marks would be most demanding.
 
J Macker said:
correct me if I'm wrong, but I have believed that the POST sequence is one of the most demanding in terms of power
Click to expand...

Ok. :D

It is in terms of spinning up your drives, fans, etc. Things with motors. Because these motors have to spin from 0 to whatever RPM.

But not in terms of CPU and GPU calculations, etc. No.

MrXerxes swapped out a video card. He didn't add four hard drives. ;-)
 
Yep motor spinup sucks up current like no tomorrow...any where from 3-> 6x nominal running current depending on the application.
 
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