Is this possible? (Fried component question)

[shud]

Ok, I had a small screw wedged between my mobo and case. It was causing weird short outs (I've had this happen before, a lot of people have...usually i just forget that I'm setting a bare mobo on the inside of a case of a system I'm building and it won't turn on and acts weird, but I digress). I finally pulled the system apart, looked inside for the suspected screw. Sure enough there it was. Got it out, put system back together, plug in, go to boot and...nothing. Great!

It was powering case fans and CPU fans for a while, but it would never boot or post. Eventually it stopped turning on. I attribute this to the PSU dying because:

1) It was a 450w Allied PSU (basically a crappy foxconn)
2) It was hooked up to 3 7200RPM drives, totalling over 350gb, a 9600 Pro 128mb, ATA133 PCI card, and a DVD-R and CD-RW drive.
3) I jumped the pins on the mobo where the power button connects to eliminate problems with the power button on the case. Flipped the PSU switch, and nothing. No power. Can't even power fans now.


My question: Is it possible that other things were also fried in this whole debacle? I'm thinking Video Card most likely, then RAM, then hard drives (which would be a huge blow).


I'm looking for positive responses here, but hit me with the truth.

 

[myocardia]

I don't think you would have messed anything at all up (besides the psu, of course ), unless you left the system on for too long at any one time. If you did, it's possible, but not extremely likely that you burned out a hard-drive motor or two. That plus quite possibly the motherboard, since that's actually where the contact was being made. Anyway, you're gonna have to replace whatever got fried, so just start with a quality power supply for now. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that's all that's wrong.

edit: You are sure that you did the wire trick with the power supply correctly, right?

 

[shud]

Thanks, myocardia, I think that seems most likely. My buddy is pringing his for sure working 300w PSU to our accounting class tomorrow and I'm going to score that from him and test it out.

I know for sure the fans work, and the PSU won't even power those. It seems really probable that that is the problem. Maybe my video card too, would give me a nice excuse to get a 9800p.



EDIT: I wish I had my digital camera so I could show you what I did. My 9600 isn't currently in there (I thought maybe my problem originally was the card, so it's been out for a while). So I stole the jumper for that that is used to switch from PAL to NTSC output. I placed that over the 2 pins where the power button for the case connects to the mobo. That should do it, right? I've heard of using a paperclip or something, but it seems a lot easier to just use a spare jumper.

 

[shud]

Bump!

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: shud
Thanks, myocardia, I think that seems most likely. My buddy is pringing his for sure working 300w PSU to our accounting class tomorrow and I'm going to score that from him and test it out.

I know for sure the fans work, and the PSU won't even power those. It seems really probable that that is the problem. Maybe my video card too, would give me a nice excuse to get a 9800p.



EDIT: I wish I had my digital camera so I could show you what I did. My 9600 isn't currently in there (I thought maybe my problem originally was the card, so it's been out for a while). So I stole the jumper for that that is used to switch from PAL to NTSC output. I placed that over the 2 pins where the power button for the case connects to the mobo. That should do it, right? I've heard of using a paperclip or something, but it seems a lot easier to just use a spare jumper.

I'm not sure that will work; that is supposed to be a momentary contact switch, so 'holding it down' like you're doing with a jumper might not trigger it. Did you try jumpering the proper pins on the PSU's motherboard header and see if the PSU's fans (and any connected fans/devices) power up?

 

[shud]

What pins on the motherboard header would I have to jump?

 

[Bleep]

Just jumper the 2 on the header that goes to the power button, just tick them for a moment, if you hold the power button down this may put your machine to sleep and it definatly not boot with the power button held in.

Bleep

 

[shud]

Bleep:

Is it safe to do this with my bare hands? Like say just touch two ends of a paperclip to the header?

 

[John]

Originally posted by: shud
Bleep:

Is it safe to do this with my bare hands? Like say just touch two ends of a paperclip to the header?

Yes, or use a screwdriver.

 

[LordMorpheus]

its relatively safe to hold a bare wire that is live. the resistance of the wire is infintesimal compared to that of your skin, so nearly all of the current will flow in the wire.

Its when you brigde the gap between a large potential and a ground that you run into problems. With death.

 

[shud]

UPDATE:

I got a friend's working 300W PSU. Thinking back, I smelled burning wires when I last shut it off when it was working. From my experience, that = dead PSU.

So I hook this new one up...and same deal. No power when attempting to boot. When PSU power switch is flipped, keyboard lights flicker, so something is getting power. It looks like it's running into problems when I try to give power to things that require the case power switch to be engaged.

Any thoughts? Bad MOBO likely?