PSU eXPloded! Help!!!

[MajorCatastrophe]

Hello,

My mate's chieftech powersupply went off with a bang and a little puff of smoke a few days ago. I wasn't there so I don't know how it happened. He's not into OCing so everything @ stock, has an ASUS A7N8X deluxe with a 2500+ barton and 512MB crucial pc2700.

What damage could this have done?

I just fitted a new power supply for him to replace the dead one and windows xp came up first time for aboot 30 secs, then the machine died, screen went blank etc. Now when I turn the power on, nothing happens. No mobo beeps, nothing and the machine does not attempt to boot anything. I've tested the hard drives in another system, they're OK but not been able to test CPU, RAM, gfx card (leadtek gf4 4200) yet.

My suspicion is that the motherboard got killed, because if it was anything else, I'd get mobo beep codes telling me about cpu problems or whatever else.

Does anybody have any experience of power supplies dying so catastrophically and the damage they can do? What can be wrong? Many thanks for any suggestions.

 

[redbeard1]

I had a power supply go up in smoke, and it took out three hard drives, a zip drive and cdrom. I replaced all the bad parts and the system still works today.

So anything is possible.

 

[Lmronby]

I'm sure you tested it but is the new PS still OK? But probably the MB died. There could have been a short or something and the 30sec of juice Just finished her off. Do any fans on the MB spin?

2 cents.

 

[Brody8877]

Your PSU probaly exploded due to an electrical surge. If that happen you will need to Replace your mobo and maybe your hard drive because it probaly burn out a transistor or circuit in the mobo.

 

[MajorCatastrophe]

Originally posted by: Lmronby
I'm sure you tested it but is the new PS still OK? But probably the MB died. There could have been a short or something and the 30sec of juice Just finished her off. Do any fans on the MB spin?

2 cents.

The northbridge is passively cooled, but the CPU fan is still spinning and that's connected to the motherboard. Also tried resetting the CMOS but that didn't do anything either.

I think the new PSU is OK (it's another chieftech one 360W same as what came with his case). All the drives power up and I've tested those in his old P3 and they still work. Didn't want to try out his gf4 in that system though because it's a really old board and I'm not sure what voltage the AGP slot runs at - didn't want to fry his vid card too! I'll be picking up the gf4 and memory tomorrow to test in my machine.

As for the CPU, I have an A7n266-C which doesn't support barton CPUs. If I plug in his barton will it still work well enough for me to establish whether the chip got killed or not?

Thanks for all your suggestions everyone.

 

[sabatcj]

Yes the barton will boot up even if it's not supported. Just clear your CMOS to the default settings.

 

[thermostat]

I had a power supply do that and it took everything with it. The motherboard, two hard drives, CD reader, a CDRW drive, video card, memory, CPU, the works. It was Deer. I will not have a another cheap power supply. I have written them ten times with no response trying to get some compensation.

 

[MajorCatastrophe]

Originally posted by: thermostat
I had a power supply do that and it took everything with it. The motherboard, two hard drives, CD reader, a CDRW drive, video card, memory, CPU, the works. It was Deer. I will not have a another cheap power supply. I have written them ten times with no response trying to get some compensation.

Whoah! That sucks :|. Up until recently I didn't know this sort of thing could happen. I thought they just died quietly. What's the general consensus on Chieftech power supplies? I always thought they were OK, can this sort of thing happen with top of the range Antecs and the like too?

Originally posted by: sabatcj
Yes the barton will boot up even if it's not supported. Just clear your CMOS to the default settings.

What about voltages? Since my mobo only supports upto T-breds is there any chance of it damaging a Barton? I'd hate to kill a perfectly good CPU whilst trying to find out if it works

 

[Brule]

The way you explain the booting and then nothing reminds me of a similar problem I fixed. In that case the computer would boot, start to launch the OS, then just go blank. In my case the motherboard's IDE control was faulty. I installed a PCI IDE card, plugged the HD/CD-ROM into it and rebooted without problems. The system worked for at least 2 more years. (I haven't seen the guy for awhile) It was because of a bad power supply, which luckily only harmed part of the mobo. Best guess is the board is toast, but the rest of the parts have a good chance of coming out okay. Good luck, hope you're as lucky as I was.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Sorry for bringing this thread back from the dead, but my power supply just did the same f*cking thing. Playing some Call of Duty and I heard a pop/bang sound and everything went dead. There is a slight burning smell, but no puff of smoke.

The machine has been stable up until this point, not a sign of any issues from the PSU. Judging from some of your comments, the odds of the components surviving are pretty small. Any advice aside from getting a new PSU to play with? Anything I should test, maybe to make sure the PSU is in fact the problem.

Gah, what a damn afternoon.

 

[PsharkJF]

You'd probably fry other hardware by trying to test the power supply. Unless you have a lot of older hardware you'll never use lying around, I wouldn't try it.
More importantly, try out everything hardware on another pc/psu that you know is good.

 

[Mark R]

A decent power supply will have a fail-safe 'crowbar' protection circuit in it. This monitors the output and will trigger if any voltage exceeds the 'safe' range. When triggered it will absorb any power surge and force the PSU to shut down. If necessary, it will destroy the PSU in order to protect the equipment connected to it.

Super-cheap PSUs often leave out this circuit, or simply make it trigger a PSU shutdown instead of actually shorting out the power surge.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: Mark R
A decent power supply will have a fail-safe 'crowbar' protection circuit in it. This monitors the output and will trigger if any voltage exceeds the 'safe' range. When triggered it will absorb any power surge and force the PSU to shut down. If necessary, it will destroy the PSU in order to protect the equipment connected to it.

Super-cheap PSUs often leave out this circuit, or simply make it trigger a PSU shutdown instead of actually shorting out the power surge.

That gives me a little hope. It was an Antec SL400. I should have bought a model from the Truepower line. I just hope my harddrive and mobo works. Everything else is expendable, IMO. From reading through some of the threads in the Technical Support and General Hardware forums, it seems these are the most likely to get blown up.:frown:

 

[navo]

Similar thing happened to me a few days ago. Fortunately the PSU was the only thing that went.