Tried putting computer together for first time...

[MakoFury]

Hello everyone-

I attempted to put my computer together for the first time. I had a friend do it for me the last two times. Anyways, I bought

AMD 3500+
MSI K8n Neo2 Platinum motherboard
OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 1 gig RAM
Lian Li 1100B Case
Antec NeoPower 480 watt PSU
Swiftech MCX 4600- V heatsink

The Lian Li case already has a pretty confusing layout, so this didn't help. I followed the directions as best I could. I thought I installed everything properly. I was unable to install the Swiftech because the fan I bought would not fit properly onto it, the rivets wouldn't fit in, so I installed the stock heatsink/fan that came with the CPU. I had everything connected...so I tried to turn it on. I pressed the power button...nothing happened at all. I called one of my friends and he walked me through some steps, made sure I had the power button correctly plugged into the motherboard, it appeared that I did. I again tried to turn it on, this time, I had my case open so I could see if anything was happening. Just as I hit the power button, the fans made a 1/2 turn rotation and stopped. I then saw a small trail of smoke come out, I couldn't exactly pin point where, but it smelled like burnt electronics. I immediately unplugged the power cord. From my guess, it seemed like the smoke came from the RAM area, not the cpu, but I could be mistaken. Any ideas on what this could be? I took out the RAM and there was no visual damage whatsoever. Tonight I'm gonna have one of my friends take a look at it...but does anyone have any idea as to what I did? Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks,

Mako

 

[chilled]

Ouch. You had (or maybe still have) some nice components there.

Did the PC actually power up at any stage?
Without looking at it, it would be hard to comment. Let your (more knowledgable) friend have a look then report back on anything he finds.

 

[MakoFury]

The computer itself never powered up. I'll let you guys know..

Thanks,

Mako

 

[arod]

You did take the strip of plastic off the cpu fan.... that could have caused your smoke and happens quite alot.

Id have your "friend" or somebody who knows computer building to come over and look at/check everything you did. Chances are it is something stupid.

 

[thorin]

My guess is you toasted your CPU.

You let all it's magic smoke out

Thorin

 

[Trey22]

Originally posted by: thorin
My guess is you toasted your CPU.

You let all it's magic smoke out

Thorin

Here's hoping that isn't the case!

 

[mechBgon]

Did you mount the motherboard on standoffs like shown in the fourth photo on this page? With a Lian-Li I'm not sure you could avoid using standoffs in the first place, but I haven't seen that model.

Also, leave your case's front USB wiring unplugged. Check the rear I/O shield to make sure the springy finger contacts didn't get into the USB or network jacks. And it would be best if you don't cross-post the same thing to both General Hardware and Technical Support, pick one and give it a day

Good luck with your issues there

 

[pandaking]

Could be some unconected/miss placed wires. Also the PSU could be a bit broken. No idea what caused the smoke though. It might all be something relating to your mobo...

 

[XBoxLPU]

The smoke could be from installation of ram backwards