If you've blown you powersupply, share your story here...

[Dolemite76]

Tuesday afternoon... was whoopin' some @ss in a little RTCW online when to my dismay... everything turned off... "WTF!!!" :Q was all I thought... I just sat there for like a minute wondering what happened... I just upgraded my system a month and change ago (AMD XP 2000+ and MSI Geforce4 TI4400 and 256 Crucial DDR PC2100)... "none of these would have caused the whole system to just turn off" was my next thought... "Crack the case open, hey look at that... the power led on the MB is still on, lemme try turning it on again" was thought number three... "what... this little fan wants to move... but just dies... wonder what's causing that" was thought number four... "oh yeah, my 300W power supply must have finally cracked under all that 'pressure'... off to my local computer hardware retailer for a new power supply" was thought number five... now I got me an Antec 430W True Power Supply and am once again a happy fragger... ahh ... nothing like solving a hardware problem in less than an hour... and I'm glad the thing didn't blow up like I've read they sometimes do...

BTW... I just read this... makes me feel like reading the lyrics to "little bunny foo foo"... but I will resist that temptation...

Comments???

 

[PuppettMaster001]

I shorted a motherboard once by trying to hook up the USB ports that came with the case into the motherboards usb output. I ended mistakingly hooking up VCC to ground and I could smell my PSU fry.

 

[XBoxLPU]

I have had a 300 watt power supply for a year now and it still runs fine. And that is with a Pentium 4 OC to 2.32 ghz and now a XP200+ @ 2200+

Haven't blown a Powersupply, yet...

 

[puck]

I never really thought much about blowing my power supply, but maybe after a few drinks things could happen...

 

[vetteguy]

I turned my 350W PSU on in my Athlon 1.4GHz system, and heard a loud buzzing and whining. About 2 seconds later, BOOM! Sparks fly out the back and smoke is pouring out of the PSU. Luckily, it didn't take anything with it.

 

[AT]

I've blown two power supplies. First one while connecting (playing around with) fans and managed to short the PSU. Instant death.

Second one happened as I was just running the computer and it shut itself down. I didn't think much of it so I restarted it and a couple of seconds after that it I heard loud bang and could smell something burning. Quickly grabbed the power cord off before anything else might happen. The PSU was burning hot so I had to let it cool before I could take it out.

In either case nothing else was broken except the PSU.

 

[Armitage]

I had a system that started life as a 486 in 1991.
When that MB died, probably around '97, I gutted it & built a pentium system in it (crappy Iwill board was never stable under Linux )
About 3 years ago, the PS blew. I wasn't around when it happened, but I eventually determined that it took the MB (No loss), cpu, CDROM, and NIC with it. video card, HDs, floppy, modem survived. The inside of the power supply was pretty fragged ... globs of molten metal, etc!

 

[Goi]

I have had a 300 watt power supply for a year now and it still runs fine. And that is with a Pentium 4 OC to 2.32 ghz and now a XP200+ @ 2200+

Haven't blown a Powersupply, yet...

Erm...maybe you didn't read the topic carefully? I think it goes something like this:
If you've blown you powersupply, share your story here...

Anyway, I blew mine(or maybe just only the fuse) when I had my really old Pentium Classic 120MHz system. I was tweaking around the case while the tower chassis was lying on its side on a carpet...after I was done I powered on and saw a HUGE spark, and the system was dead. Thank god it didn't fry the rest of my system...after that I never messed with my system on carpet every again.

 

[cavingjan]

Just blew a power supply here at the office and it took the motherboard, harddrive and video card with it. I guess it didn't want to go down alone.

 

[SearchMaster]

I have a Dell PII-266 that I've had since it was the literal top-of-the-line processor. It's served as my domain controller for a while.

I needed a floppy (don't ask), so I used the one from that box. Hooked everything back up, plugged the power cord back in, and Boom! - sparks.

Fortunately, I had just bought a "junk box" from work for $15 that had a PIII processor, case, and MB. I had already put the processor in another box, and the power supply was a perfect fit in my old server. Working like a champ again (best $15 I've spent in a while). The old PS has a layer of dust on/in it about a half inch thick.

 

[Ime]

I had a friend who wanted to fix his PS. His system wouldn't turn on so he decided he would re-wire the PS to be "always on". We had a couple of beers, and after he put the PS back into his PC he stood over his computer as I plugged it into the wall outlet...

The power supply exploded and caught fire! I could hear him screaming "Turn it off! TURN IT OFF!" as I unplugged the power cord from the wall. After that I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I guess I had more than a couple of beers.

He wasn't hurt, though the smoke alarm went off. I was laughing for quite awhile after that.

As for his computer? Most of it was destroyed, I think he was able to salvage the floppy drive.

 

[BD231]

I blew a true power 330, sooooooo much smoke:Q

 

[poppasp1ce]

i blew a deer and sparkle 250w psu when i first got my athlon 1.4. i knew that 250w wouldn't cut it but i was so anxious to play with my new toys that i didn't care. they were just two spare psu sitting in my closet so i didn't care. although in retrospect, i realize that they could have taken my new toys down with them.

 

[BDawg]

I didn't acutally blow it, but Gateway tried to make me...

When I was in college, I worked as a Sys Admin for a department in our school's Medical School. This was back in the day when Gateway gave a 5 year warranty and we had a number of similar model machines.

One of the machines stopped functioning, so we troubleshot it and discovered it was the PS. To confirm, I put another PS in the system and it worked perfectly.

I called Gateway who refused to believe that the power supply was dead. The only way they would ship another power supply was if I shorted the PS myself. The wanted me to stick a plastic handled screwdriver into the power supply (while plugged in) to try and arc the PS. If it arced, the PS was good, if not, they would send another PS.

Since I don't fancy purposefully sticking things into a power supply, I got my boss on the phone who said none of his employees were going to stick anything in a power supply and if they didn't send another PS, we would never buy another Gateway again. Needless to say, we had a new PS in the mail for overnight delivery.

 

[vailr]

Was upgrading some SDRAM with three 64 MB sticks ("free after rebate" from CompUSA). The boot screen showed 64 MB less than what it should have. Shortly thereafter, no boot at all. Turns out one of the memory sticks had an internal short, which ended up permanently zapping the 3 volt portion of the system's P.S.. (The 5 & 12 volt portions were still working). CompUSA at first didn't want to acknowledge the faulty memory, but finally agreed to replace it with another stick, after testing it in one of their own machines.

 

[ravedave]

BAck in the day I ordered an ABIT KT7 and a duron 700. I was workign as a tech at the time, so whoop dee doo another mobo install...
I installed evverything, booted it up and she ran great. shut her down, popped in the boot floppy, fired her up... and nothing. i still remember clickign the damn power button in frustration (click-click, click-click, click-click, click-click, click-click, click-click...hehe). Turns out that either the mobo was bad or the PSU was bad cause my mobo, chip, PSU, and memory all went at once.. I suspect it was the PSU since the last mobo was quite unstable. luckily the case was less than a year old and the mobo+prco were brand new. I was only out $40 for the ram....

 

[KillerCow]

She was an old Compaq -- AT -- early pentium -- P60 I think. I knew she was nothing but trouble when I layed eyes on her.

"What's it doing or not doing?" I asked

Her owner answered, "I got this from my uncle. It wasn't starting so someone took the power thing out. He couldn't find a replacement because it has that extra connector, so he gave it to me. I don't know if it works or how to put it in. Could you have a look at it?"

"Alright."

I opened the case.

"I see that you took the power switch out. You can just leave those in, all AT switches are the same."

"Oh, I didn't do that."

"It's ok, I can fix it."

I put the PSU on top of the case, plugged it into the board, and picked up the switch. Click. Powered up but no POST. Click.

"Is that good?" the owner inquired.

"No, it won't start."

"That's what he said was wrong with it."

"Give a minute to try some things."

I pulled out all of the cards. Click. No POST. Click. I reseated the RAM and CPU and pulled out the IDE cables. Click. No POST. Click. I inspected the innards. It was probably just dead. Bad motherboard most likely. Or a dead BIOS.

Click. 120 volts shot through my right arm... up to my chest. I dropped the power switch. It fell away... it hit the case... the PSU fan stopped.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, it just shocked me."

My test monitor was off as well. I recovered the power switch and held it more carefully. Click. I reset the fuse to my workbench. The monitor powered up. Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing.

"The machine won't start. It has a bad motherboard, CPU, or power supply, I can't replace any of them."

 

[DanFungus]

Originally posted by: Dolemite76
BTW... I just read this... makes me feel like reading the lyrics to "little bunny foo foo"... but I will resist that temptation...

Comments???

/me thinks about it


"little bunny foo foo, hoppin through the forest. Scoopin up some field mice and boppin them on the head."
ah, much better

 

[Dolemite76]

Wow... I guess I was pretty luck it didn't take my MB, CPU, MEM, or other stuff with it... but then again... it didn't "blow up" exactly... I immediatly unplugged all cards, HDs, and fans except for video I do that as a precaution when something is screwy... thanx for the replies dudes... this was my first post here in the AT Forums...

GREEN NO MORE...