Snap, crackle, pop...

[GeoMixster]

Long story short,

Thought I had a bad hard drive so I bought two new ones, pull everything out and vacuumed the case and powersupply. Put it back and have this:

400W ps
Athlon XP 1500+
Epox EP-8KHA+ mb
Maxtor 80GB (brand new) drive master, channel 0
Maxtor 80GB (brand new) drive slave, channel 0
Ricoh CDRW/DVD combo drive master, channel 1
Maxtor 40GB (possibly going bad) drive slave, channel 1

Also have 3 case fans connected and a floppy drive.

After connecting all above correctly, I hit the power switch and sparks fly out of the power supply on the inside of the case (I'd left the top off) and then nothing. A vaguely electrical burnt smell in the air, but after rechecking the cords, nothing from the power switch.

My thought is that perhaps I dislodged a massive dust bunny with the vacuum that then bridged something in the power supply. My questions are these:

1. How do I tell (without any spare parts around) exactly what have I damaged?

2. Would overloading the power supply cause this? I would have thought if I had too much connected I just wouldn't boot or I'd have an unstable system, not fireworks.

Any thoughts? Please also email any response as I'm working from a borrowed laptop and checking my mail from the web when I can. This truly sucks.

-Mike

mixster (at) yahoo (dot) com

 

[mechBgon]

Dang If it were me, I'd start by getting a new, quality-brand power supply somewhere. At least a 350W unit from Sparkle Power, Antec or Enermax. It sounds like a safe bet the PSU is dead, so it's not a waste to buy a new one, regardless of whether the rest of the parts work or not. Maybe you'll get lucky, but I would run full diagnostics on the hard drives using Maxtor's PowerMax utility so you know where you stand on the drives, if the system runs again.

Don't scrimp on PSU's. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it If you can find an Antec TruePower 330 locally (CompUSA or Fry's?) they are very strong and run around $60 in retail stores, or there's a hot buy on Antec TruePower 430's at Amazon for $75 shipped, and if you search the fat wallet dot com forums for AMEX you'll find a discount code that actually works with other credit cards too (unless it expired) bringing the cost down to $66 shipped plus local tax.

If that's a bit rich, Newegg.com has the 350W Sparkle Power for under $50 shipped. I'll email this for you also. Good luck!

 

[GeoMixster]

Would this do the job?

http://www.axiontech.com/prdt.php?item=33460

(350Watt, Antec)

Oh, and I just yanked the power supply and pulled it apart. Two resistors look fried (melted) and (bear with me here) the black square thing with wires running into it that has a screw to hold it to one of two large heat sinks actually cracked a piece off. This is a Leadman PowMax LP6100 I guess. Good/bad/otherwise? Anyhow, it's toast and I won't be getting another of these, but the one I did list looks promising...

-Mike

 

[GeoMixster]

N/M,

Went with the hot deal on the Antec 430... Now I've got to wait out the two weeks shipping. Hopefully I won't go crazy between now and then. Guess I'll just go Geocaching. Thanks for the advice and the links. I appreciate the quick response.

-Mike

 

[mechBgon]

I think it will arrive much sooner than they make it sound like. Someone in the Hot Deals thread was remarking that theirs came in three days (of course, he/she might live near the warehouse, but still, they got it out the door fast). Hang in there, and good luck with the system

 

[redbeard1]

I had a similar thing happen. I was under a desk plugging the cables back into a computer. When I was plugging the power cable into the power supply, which was at eye level, so I could see into the power supply through the cooling fan, an orange glowing ball appeared right before my eyes, with a fair amount of smoke. I quickly unplugged the power cord, and assumed the power supply was shot. I went and found another one and swapped it in. To my horror, whatever had occured, took out three hard drives, a cdrom and a internal zip drive. To my amazement the motherboard and everything on it were ok. That system is still in use today.

Hopefully you'll have better luck.

 

[GeoMixster]

Eeek! I hope all is well. Although techincally I could return the hard drives to worst buy if they were damaged. (Not the best business practice in the world, but I need this thing working!!). I'll see how long it takes to arrive and hopefully I'll have better luck. Since my house has a fair ammount of dust, what can I do short of installing a whole house air filter to resolve this situation in the future? Thanks!

Mike

 

[Buzzman151]

You can buy little air filters for all the inlet fans on your computer. I have some on mine and they work quite nicely and they're relativly inexpensive. I'm in a bit of a rush so I can't give you a link to an example one right now but all I have to say now is clean then regularly b/c if not, they get clogged w/ dust and the air flow through your case goes to crap.