I was just on my PC at home earlier this afternoon and I noticed a weird smell. For the life of me I couldn't figure it out. I wandered around checking electrical appliances and didn't end up finding out the culprit until I came back to the PC. It was off, I assume the power supply fried because the tower outside where it was was hot. My question for all those that know about computers is when a power supply goes what does it take with it? My hopes is nothing else got fried along with it, but I'll have to find that one out at a later date. Good thing we have a laptop laying around the house.

 

If the system was off, it may not have fried anything, but most likely if anything goes it would be the motherboard. There is always some power to the MB. You will see that by the standby LED. The standby power is usually +5v.

 

It was on when it went. I have to leave for work in a bit so I'll have to crack it open tomorrow and see what gives.

 

Depends on what happened and how severe.

It could just do nothing and just have to replace the PS.
Or....
It can take out everything. MB, processor, audio and video card, hard drives, cd roms, everything.

Best thing to do, if you dont have one, I'd probably go to a used computer store, and buy a cheap used 100-150 watt PS for $20 to try. If it you can get each piece to fire up with a small cheap one, then you might not beable to run the entire computer on it, but then you'll know if it's worth getting a replacement.

 

In October my computer kicked the power supply while it was on. Sounded like the 4th of July with all the popping and sparks. It took with it the motherboard and the HD. No big deal though, I keep my stuff backed up so nothing was lost but the computer and a few hours setting up the replacement.

 

Wierd, thats when mine went too, both hard drives were fine, but I could see burn marks on the MB. So just ordered a dell and a network direct attached storage for teh HD's presto. Got a new file server, new computer and a new monitor out of teh deal!!!

 

Most of the time it's just the PS. I have seen them take out HDD's when they go. No way to tell until you fire it back up.

 

What is this, the month for Power Supplies to croak? I just replaced mine and that was the only thing that went bad. I guess I got lucky.....

Woof
Bowser

 

Most cheap power supplies are cheap for a reason. Very few cases come with a quality unit, and most name brand computers use marginal units just good enough to run it with no safety margin. A quality power supply can still fail, but will usually fail gracefully without taking anything else down with it, but cheap units can blow everything.

 

For the most part if a power supply burns out, it will only affect the power supply. The rest should be fine. Like stated above, go out and get a new power supply, whatever your motherboard requires and try it out. If it was just the power supply, plug in the motherboard ( like I said, if you have p4 and above you need the correct ps ) and hard drives then try to boot up. If the cpu fan turns on and starts booting up then your good, otherwise its time to upgrade the system.

Good luck!!

Dells now-a-days are really cheap in cost, if needed I would suggest going with them.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I really do appreciate it.

 

continuing this topic- i've got a question too- if my tower has a 750w. PS, can it handle me throwing another 300gb HD, and adding another graphics card (256mb) in SLI-- or do I need to upgrade to a 1k?

 

It depends what else you have, but I am running 2 HDs, 2DVD burners, floppy, 2 120mm fans plus a cpu fan, Intel MB, 3GB memory, floppy, and a BFG 640MB Nvidia 8800GTOC with a 620watt power supply and have easily enough left to add an SLI card if I wanted to. I was running this except it was a 7950 card before on a 480 watt without a problem.

 

Dell XPS 710: its running 4gb of ram, 2 dvd burners, dedicated 4" CPU fan & heatsink, 4" system fan, (2) 2" fans, 1 HD, (1) 7900 GS, (1) soundblaster X-Fi 7.1
i'm thinkin I'll be alright with my planned upgrades-

 

I doubt you are even close to maxing out.