Power Supply Failures - Who's had them and what got taken out with it?

[fubar569]

This is just a little survey. the power supply in my dual rig crapped, so i bought a true control 550. Installed it, and still won't power on...i triple checked everything, so i went through testing everything out and now i think my motherboard's toast. i just wanted to see how likely this is, and what all has been taken out by a power supply failure. so far it looks like all my peripherals are fine...thank god...how about you guys?

 

[RancidWAnnaRIot]

A bad supply can take out everything and anything my friend.. just two weeks ago, my Gfs brothers computers power supply crapped out.. took out everything.. and i mean EVERYTHING!! even the keyboard and mouse!!! mobo, CPU, RAM.. ALL .. ALLL ALLL nothing was spared... so it is possible.. and you shouldn't be surprised that you lost the mobo..

 

[FLECOM]

i have been so lucky...

first psu that went was my 460watt NMB dual athlon power supply... its the funky psu for the tyan 2462... anywho, lets just say it involved water and a loud bang...

no victims thankfully...

next was a 500 watt psu i modded to run my 2462.... it really wasnt 500 watts but with the addition of a tornado in it... it did its job...

tornado was attached to a fan controller, that decided to die... thanks vantec... anywho, aparantly the psu got hotter and hotter until it quite literally exploded...

no casualites...

next was a "350 watt" psu from Aspire/Turbo Case... was running my 2466 for about an hour... when i heard a pop and the machine froze... im like... and then i hear BANG BANG BANG and a really bright flash of light and the machine turns of...

oook... after i changed my underwear, put another psu and no casualties again

 

[Tim_axe]

This isn't acturally a PSU failure story, but basically a computer survival story.


My custom built case (designed/built by me) has very sharp edges. Think 20ga sheet steel cut on a metal breaker, and then bent into shape and bolted together.

Anyways, I'm tired of cutting my leg on this case. So I get some plastic tubing, and it won't quite stay on. I decide to hot glue it in place, so I get a hot glue gun. I get back, and talk on MSN while the glue gun warms up. After it is warm, I begin applying some glue. So far soo good, but then it doesn't quite spread like I want it to in order to hold the tube over the sharp corner, so I nudge the glue gun a tiny bit closer... BANG!!! A big flash erupts between the glue gun and my computer case as 120v AC is sent to ground. The glue gun just so happens to be located between my legs, and I'm crouching over it to make sure I can see where the glue is going... Yes, I was very scared.


Luckily the only casualty was the $1 glue gun. And I even got around to cutting the edges with a special set of cutters that round the edges, so I'm not cutting myself on it as much anymore...

 

[fubar569]

lucky indeed FLECOM...this is my first and has me convinced now to only invest in name brand equipment...

Tim...got a picture of that case? it sounds like a pretty killer job!

 

[gee]

Several years back, I had an old Sparkle supply literally sparkle there was a loud BANG and it threw sparks out the back.

Dead:

- Socket 7 mobo
- AMD K6-2/500 that ran at 616 aircooled
- 128MB stick of SDRAM
- 20 gig HD
- CD burner
- network card
- floppy drive

Survivors:

- voodoo3.

I've heard good things about Fortron/Sparkle nowadays, but I'd still feel uneasy about buying a sparkle supply after that incident..

 

[Vertigo Acid]

Well, my trusty Enermax of 2 years decided to start randomly shorting and shutting down, requiring a pull of the AC and wait, so I replaced him and took him out to the bench. Busted him open, plugged it in again and blew not only the fuse but also the current limiting resistors. Man those are scary, they shoot flaming chunks out when they go. But, I wasn't letting go that easily. I checked everywhere for shorts, but couldn't find any, so I found a new set of CLRs from another old PSU, soldered em in, dropped in a new (and bigger ) fuse, which I guess was a mistake because the fuse never blew, but one of the large capacitors did, spewing electrolyt everywhere, which was rather hot, and blowing yet another pair of CLRs. So, in a last ditch effort, I bridged where the CLRs were, hit the switch, and caught the AC corner of the board on fire. That was a riot. It was lots of fun. And now I have yet another parts supply, or perhaps one waiting for a forward converter mod to run on DC. Muhahahahahah

 

[Scorpionjwp]

Heres a powersupply failure: Just had a bad storm in the Milford, OH area, a nasty spike hit the house, took out my alarm clock and other stuff. We were in the dark for most of the night, alarms from the den going off like the countdown to doomsday. I proceed to turn off the UPS units to save the battery power, I then turn off my fathers pc.
So the next morning after picking up fallen tree limbs, I proceed to the den to start up the UPS units, as a do so, my dad's pc flickers on then off for some reason a small jolt made the pc turn on and off suddenly. I turn on the PC to see if everything is fine, two minutes into booting up, I hear crackle sounds from the Powersupply, then sparks flew out, Oh shit, I quickly unplugged the powersupply.

I got a new UPS and Powersupply, then found out the main HD was toast and so was the sound card. The sound card got toasted as I turned on the PC after the replacement of Powersupply, a flicker of electricity arched over from the mb to the sound card. The motherboard Is fine though.

 

[firtol88]

An AOpen PSU died resulting in a strange sound and smoke (may have sparked but I didn't see it) it killed a 1.33 Athlon, a 40 Gig IBM GXP75 (probably would have died on it's own ) and an Asus A7M266 MB.

 

[fubar569]

just a update on my situation:

my brother let me borrow his KV7 to test out my chips and both boot into windows without problems, so looks like the only thing i lost was the motherboard....good thing cause i really didn't wanna have to replace one or both of my processors...

 

[L0s7 4 Lyf3]

About 3 weeks ago as I got to a LAN party, my computer wouldn't boot (It did 2 hours earlier though). Every time I got it to successfully turn on it would go to the BIOS telling me that the speed settings for my 2500+ were incorrect and needed to be changed. I went through all the settings multiple times until it booted to the Windows XP load screen at 1100MHz and then froze. After a while I finally got it IN TO windows but then at the logon screen froze. A while later *POP!* audible throughout the entire room, woke some people up (it was like 3 in the morning then).

Took out my Motherboard

Everything else survived, hopefully I haven't gotten to test it in another computer though I know my 9700PRO, RAM, and main HD are fine .