i just finished building my 1st PC and i plugged in the PSU and turned it on when i did it smoked and flashed and tripped the electricity? I guess its broken but might it have taken my other components with it? Really hope its not broken everything :'(

12 years ago*

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dafuq? I guess you didn't change the PSU voltage switch.

If it was a good PSU, nothing but it should be burnt.

12 years ago
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should be burnt meaning it will still work? its a XFX850W pro which is pretty good

12 years ago
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No. What PSU was it?

12 years ago
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Your PSU is probably fucked. It looks like a decent one so hopefully it didn't kill anything else. You might have plugged the wrong thing into the mobo.

12 years ago
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the mobo lead wasnt going in properly might be why?

12 years ago
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I don't think that PSU will work ever again.

12 years ago
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not tooworied about the PSU £80 i can afford but cant afford to buy £1000 of new gpus and cpus ect

12 years ago
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Way to go champ !

12 years ago
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thanks

12 years ago
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What's it smell like? Burnt pie, cookies or melted tires?

12 years ago
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More like roasted marshmallows I guess!

12 years ago
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Capacitors. Either the board or the power supply are shot.

12 years ago
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erm not really sure just smelt like burning only abit tho and no steam came out

12 years ago
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"Steam" no pun intended?

12 years ago
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no its not a pun, not ina very jokey mood at the momebt

12 years ago
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Yikes! Even if it's just the PSU, that's horrible. :(

12 years ago
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Either you plugged in everything wrong or the PSU was bad. Probably everything just went up. Talk to whever you ordered the parts from man.

12 years ago
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will they replace it?

12 years ago
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That's why I said talk to where you bought it from.

12 years ago
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If you got it recently they probably will. Try to find another PSU to borrow to make sure the rest of your parts are okay. Some PSU manufacturers will cover your parts if their shit blows it up.

12 years ago
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hmm il contact them tomorrow or should i get someone to look at it 1stto see what is broken?

12 years ago
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Check the other parts first. If something else got fucked you might want to try to get them to replace them.

12 years ago
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hmm ok

12 years ago
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And this is why you leave the work to whoever's getting paid to do it.

12 years ago
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+1

12 years ago
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12 years ago
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yup thats what i said and now my pc is blown up

12 years ago
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Actually, no. If I make a PC piece by piece on an actual store, I spend x. If I make it on-line, I spend x+shipping+taxes+everythingelse. If you can lift your arse up the sofa and search for a store that sells cheap, you'll find a better deal, with more accessible warranty and help from the staff.

12 years ago
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You cant be serious, you will ALWAYS pay way more buying prebuilt, unless you get some system on sale thats not for gaming at all.

P.S: Parts come with warranties.

12 years ago
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I can buy piece by piece on stores as well. I don't see what the big deal is: You go to a store, ask for the components, they give you the price, you find the better deal, buy and ask for support if needed. Since I live in Portugal, shipping always comes more expensive on cheaper stores.
Parts come with warranties from the manufacturer, if I have a problem with something, the store takes care of it. Simple as that.

For example: A friend of mine spend 450500€ on a top i5, with a 2GB ATI, 1TB , 8GB RAM etc. etc. (No details, sorry). If he were to import, it would cost him about 650700? It's about finding the right place.

12 years ago
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In most places its TONS cheaper to order online, hell most of my PC parts were shipped for free with no taxes. There is nowhere in my area that sells for close to as cheap as Newegg, Amazon, or Tiger Direct, even after shipping charges, stores charge more because they have to run stores, that overhead cost more money so they charge sometimes double for a part. Actually I would have to pay taxes anyways in stores if I went that route.

Maybe its different in Portugal, but here in newyork you are crazy as hell to build by buying from stores(There are none that can beat online price wise, trust me I checked), it will come out to double, sometimes triple the price of online. Its super easy to return stuff online anyways, newegg pays return shipping also. So telling a random guy on the internet that its cheaper to buy in store is insane unless he is your next door neighbor or you know he lives near a store like that.

Plus your first post seemed to say that it was dumb for him to build and not get a pre-built or have someone build it for him.

12 years ago
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I guess I'm lucky then :)
I was kidding, however if you don't know how to build something or you have any doubts, the trial and error method is not recommended.

EDIT: You have to admit, shipping stuff from New York IS easier than from my country. You have a better infrastructure when it comes to services, since most of the companies are from America. Plus importing something from America means double the costs, since I'm in the EU. If I were to import something from, IDK, Germany, it would be more expensive to me.

12 years ago
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Yeah but its the only way to learn :-). Its not that hard anyways as long as you follow directions and can work a screw driver really, thats all thats needed. I meant no harm by my post, its all good :-).

Yeah thats for sure, its one benefit of here I suppose.

12 years ago
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Of course it's all good, no harm whatsoever :D

12 years ago
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now he will spend more money fixing it. :D

12 years ago
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Depending on where he bought he might get lucky and just get a replacement psu.

12 years ago
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Lol built my first pc when I 13 and had NO experience, its rather easy, he probably got a bad PSU, its rare with good brands but it can happen, dont give up.

12 years ago
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Not to mention a good brand will absorb the surge / spike and not let it carry down the line to the other parts. I have been building computers since 1990, its sooo much easier now, just have to watch what you are doing. As far as buying pre-built vs parts. Well, other than the Graphics card and power supply, you can almost buy a new computer for less than building now. The main reason is the (at the least) $110 copy of Windows you have to pay for. This being said, I will never buy and have never bought myself a pre-built desktop.

I have had my share of mishaps though. Such as the one time I was sick and home from school. Doped up on drugs and decided it was a good time to upgrade the ram and add heat spreaders to the ram. I had that electronics smell in my room for the next week. Luckily it only took out one slot. Another that comes to mind is when I was in I.T. recently, and had to replace a computer. I grabbed an old Cooler Master power supply I carried around just in case. When I turned on the computer, the thing popped and went up in smoke. My heart stopped for a second because this was hooked into the computer at the time.

12 years ago
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You can buy a computer for cheap nowadays but first issue is that you really don't know the quality but maybe even more troublesome is that if you are buying to game you will most likely need to buy another psu anyways to support whatever gpu you buy. Better off building, mistakes happen but really most places are nice about returns from what I can tell.

Yeah that seems like a bad idea lol. I would not be able to take that smell, I had a fan go up in fire once out of the blue and that was nasty smelling alone. That said I never messed up while building before, never got a bad part also(Unless you count explodofan), guess I am lucky, well that and a crazy amount of part research.

12 years ago
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I remember building my first computer...I did everything right. You probably burned out the motherboard (pretty common) and might have taken other things with it. Go to tomshardware.com and ask around there.

12 years ago
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well, least that didnt happen when i built my 1st pc, but what PSU was it?

12 years ago
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hmm never heard of this company, but your PSU could have been a faulty one, just one of those days

12 years ago
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you never heard of xfx? :/

12 years ago
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LOL.
Never heard of XFX.... sure.

12 years ago
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Probably took the mobo with it

12 years ago
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12 years ago
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If my other componets havnt blown up and i plug PSU andall backin to see if it works might i blow everyting up?

12 years ago
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i bet it smelled like money, didnt it ?

the only way u could check if other hardware is okay, is to test them one by one with some other , working pc!

second thing u could check , is capacitors , are they swollen , cracked , means they are dead

12 years ago
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You should not use the same PSU again, get another one to try with. You can try removing the PSU from the machine and plug it in the wall. If its broken it should blow the fuse in the room.

12 years ago
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btw, that was i talking about ...
u made it sound like i was wrong :( >.<

12 years ago
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I didn't see your reply before i posted mine. :)

12 years ago
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ok il try that tommorow it did blow the socket earlier

12 years ago
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Yes, same happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Got a new PSU and everything else is working fine. So hopefully nothing else in the machine is broken.

12 years ago
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good luck mate, hope everythink else works!

12 years ago
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when i plugged it into the wall nothing happens?

12 years ago
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Mostly likely you had the wrong voltage settings on your PSU. Don't worry everything else in your Pc should be fine except for the PSU which has been blown up.

12 years ago
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do newer psu's have those switches ? :o

12 years ago
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Well idk. Some do though. I used to have one on my old PC.

12 years ago
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my psu is from us , even theres no switch :P havent seen that switch for ages XD

pentium 3-s had that switch for sure!

12 years ago
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what switch?

12 years ago
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its normally a little red switch. It flips from 115 to 215. Just pick up a new PSU and youll be good(Make sure you look at the switch this time)

12 years ago
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there is only 1switch on psu which is on/off swotch

12 years ago
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So it did not have this? (fixed)

12 years ago
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12 years ago
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its eu and im from uk i ckntacted xfx support and they saod it would be fine

12 years ago
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12 years ago
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i have contacted them and they said, ' Sorry To Hear That, Contact your reseller' so i will send it back to amazon but not sure whether to get a refund or replacement, i think i will take it to someone else to fix it up

12 years ago
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lol damn

12 years ago
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Shit happens, my external alimentation for HDDs blew up its capacitors taking with it one of my old HDDs. Now I had to salvage a power supply from an old rig and adapt it for stand alone desk use.

12 years ago
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Have you checked that the PSU voltage indicator was correct? hopefully if that was the case, the its only the PSU which got broken.

12 years ago
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no what and where is the voltage ibdicator?

12 years ago
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use Everest

12 years ago
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Check if next to the input, there's an indicator that says something like 110v-230v (some do, some don't). If your house is running on 110v and you set it at 220v, then the PSU is most likely fried.

12 years ago
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nope there isnt one

12 years ago
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Blue Smoke

12 years ago
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Happened to me before.

I could start my computer up again and occasionally get some flames to fly out the back of my PSU. It was really entertaining.

You need a new PSU, and maybe a new brand/model of PSU. I had a OCZ 750w that I took back to the store twice, only to have the replacements do the same thing. (None of them had any voltage switches or anything.)

I said, "screw this", and bought an Antec PSU. It's been working for 3 years now.

12 years ago
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How the heck was that entertaining, I would have been flippin out!

12 years ago
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The flames were only coming 10-20cms out of the back; it wasn't flamethrowering my apartment.

12 years ago
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only 20cm ? lol

12 years ago
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Yea

12 years ago
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Well the good part of this is that your are not hurt! :)

12 years ago
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Gotta love how people give diagnostics with just 2 lines of information.

12 years ago
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Hahaha

12 years ago
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lol

Sounds like you forgot the motherboard standoffs or the PSU was set to the wrong voltage.

12 years ago
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nope and there isnt a voltage changer

12 years ago
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I lol'd, sorry.

Next time don't do anything you don't know nothing about.

Anyway, I guess everything won't be burned, but motherboard could be, depends how good is /was/ your PSU.

12 years ago
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it was a very good quality PSU so hopefully everything will be fine

12 years ago
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To be safe heres the simplest way: get another PSU, and test the components (1 by one if possible, adding cpu, then ram and last the gfx) could be that your PSU somehow was overloaded and was giving a false Watt read and...well overloaded.

And you can test a PSU with just connecting it to the plug, it wont do anything, then do the Paperclip test and see if the fans start turning. It's a 'safe' way, you dont get electrocuted at all.

12 years ago
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Next time video it!!

12 years ago
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got my new psu but there is white foamy stuff on the inside? should i still use it?

12 years ago
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Closed 12 years ago by Deadlytyler.