So I believe my PSU blew up

O

Otacon

n00b
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
7
Edit: Mods please move this to the General Hardware forum, it seems I was browsing computers + gadgets and didn't notice I was making a thread in here.

So long story short I have a 800Watt BFG psu powering 4 case fans, an 8800GTX, soundcard, e6850, tuniq tower, and a wireless card. It worked fine for 7 month, no noticable problems that could have led up to the incident. Then yesterday my computer loses power, I thought I had blown a fuse but turns out that wasn't the case. But after 4 seceonds of losing power I hear a mini-explosion from inside my computer case. As you can imagine I'm freaking out right now. So I unplug my power and w/e and open the side of my computer case. I begin to smell this burnt plastic smell coming from somewhere. I ID'd the culprit as the power supply, coming directly from the outside PSU fan. Now I don't have another computer to test anything out with, but the mobo LED wasn't flashing when I reconnected the power, and from the smell I assumed it came from the PSU.

So I called an RMA and they sent it through the mail and I print it out and ship it (lifetime warranty), sounds easy right?

The one thing I'm concerned about damages to other parts in the computer. There's a good 1400$ in parts (well, at least when I payed for it) and when a PSU blows I'm concerned exactly what are the chances of everything being F'd up. I can imagine since the power blew that it's not like it was sending too much power and blew everything up, but it was more of a defunct psu that died after 7 months.

I have nothing to test my components in and sadly I don't have an extra PSU.
 
Damn. Well, it's hard to say if anything was damaged really. Mostly depends on how it failed and if the failure caused any kind of power surges or the like. Hope it all works when you get your new PSU!
 
Otacon said:
snip

The one thing I'm concerned about damages to other parts in the computer. There's a good 1400$ in parts (well, at least when I payed for it) and when a PSU blows I'm concerned exactly what are the chances of everything being F'd up. I can imagine since the power blew that it's not like it was sending too much power and blew everything up, but it was more of a defunct psu that died after 7 months.

I have nothing to test my components in and sadly I don't have an extra PSU.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the PSU is going to be dead. I've had this happen 2 times in rigs, and 1 time outside of a rig (I was using a PSU to power a robot), but in all cases the other components were fine. Check all your wires coming out (especially fan connector adapters) and look to see if they are intact. I've had an unused molex connector somehow make contact with the case and the wires going to it caught on fire and the PSU freaked out and died. Shorts are bad, so cap any unused connectors with electrical tape in the future as a precaution.
 
Most quality power supplies are overload protected. It's a separate circuit that should prevent an over voltage condition from damaging anything connected to your power supply. I had a generic power supply that came with my case belch fire. :eek: I turned on the power switch on the back of the case and it blew up. Replaced it with a quality power supply and crossed my fingers. Nothing else was damaged in my case. :)
 
Happened to me once a good 10 years or so ago, I wasn't the one using it though... a friend was using my PC while I wasn't around, I came back and he was terrified, started off saying 'I'm really, really sorry but...' and he explained that there was a loud bang and then the strong smell of burned plastic. He thought it was his fault lol :)
Anyway, that was before I got into computers so it was a crappy generic PSU. Come to think of it, my PSU exploding probably kick started my interest in PC's, since that was the first time I ever had to open up my PC case and peek inside :)
Pretty soon I was upgrading RAM, etc etc and now I have to ebay my organs to fund the habit :(

So yeah...

And btw, my components were fine when the PSU exploded so you'll probably be OK.
 
I've heard some stories of power supply defects, failures, and what you call mini-explosions taking out their motherboards. There's still a good chance everything is alright and none of your components are broken or damaged, except the PSU of course. haha.
 
I had one crappy PSU blow up. I think it was a powmax or raidmax or something like that. All my parts survived. I also had a TT PurePower 560w die this summer. It melted the ATX plug to the MB and took out a hd. Pissed me off. I bought the TT to replace the blown raidmax over 3 years ago because I thought it was a good PSU.
 
I had a bunch of Antec power supplies go out a couple years ago with sparks and flame. The rest of the hardware survived.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top