Deep fried mobo?

[fuddam]

Long story short: tried new RAM from ebay together with existing RAM & PC wouldn't post. Removed new RAM & rebooted. Bright flash from rear of desktop, smell of burning, obviously completely dead.

I know I'll have to take it all apart to find solution. Also assume best case scenario is simply PSU needs replacing, & worst case is new PSU, mobo, cpu - right?

Anyone had such an experience?

Happened a few mins ago & need to hit the sack.

Any recommendations appreciated. Yes, PC was turned off on rear switch when inserting/removing the RAM.

C'est la vie.

[SUMMONER]

I have had 2 PSUs go bang in the past 6 years. Luckily on both occasions nothing else died along with it. Both times the PSU smelled a little of burned plastic.

Fingers crossed, it is just the PSU.

[AGTDenton]

It largely depends on brand and cause of failure when it comes to the PSU as to what other damage there could be.
Good quality PSU's have various protections in place to not blow things up beyond the PSU. However, cheap ones could just send high voltages down the cables and other components are wiped out too.

I recently had a cheap PSU blow on a friends PC, one of those 750w jobs for £18. Fearing the worst it did not blow any other components thank god!!

Until you take it apart and try with another PSU, its all speculation.

Best of luck!

[Galant]

Have you confirmed it's the PSU? Any obvious signs?

If not, then it's the usual step by step. Confirm it's the PSU. If so you'll need a replacement and maybe a spare old one for testing also, and then whether it is ot not, check the mobo.

Happy to say I've never had a PSU go bad/blow but I have had RAM ports blow. Was obvious due to the black marks!

[Solex]

I had a psu died on me for no reason, opened it up, one of the capacitor had its cap burst opened, replaced it and it was back to normal. First i would check the psu if its working: short the green wire PS_ON) to ground (black wire) from the ATX connector and see if the fan will spin, probe for voltages in ur molex/8pin/6pin connectors, if no avail; time for a new psu. If it does work, then you may need to replace pretty much everything that was connected to psu.

[SUMMONER]

First i would check the psu if its working: short the green wire PS_ON) to ground (black wire) from the ATX connector and see if the fan will spin, probe for voltages in ur molex/8pin/6pin connectors, if no avail; time for a new psu.

Pictures always help, when doing something like this.

[watercooled]

I find it suspicious that this would happen by sheer coincidence after working inside the case. Have a look across the DIMM slots, does it look like any pins could be bent/shorted for example?

[wolfsSpirit]

Always suprised how people manage to do that
Thumb of rule is never buy a cheap PSU , use corsair or a well known gaming PSU.
Why? because those cheap PSU's are meant for office computers , that's what they are designed for , not for high demanding gaming systems.
And always double check when installing hardware , i also have learned the hard way long ago , never use memory modules from different brands and types.
I know people who build a complete system within 10 minutes including watercooling(closed circuit) , and i know those same people also blow up a lot regulary lol ( too lazy to read a manual , too much in a hurry to check cables and connections)
BTW nothing personal to op ,so don't feel attacked , it's just a mention of something i always notice with many builders.

[kalniel]

Always suprised how people manage to do that
Thumb of rule is never buy a cheap PSU , use corsair or a well known gaming PSU.
Why? because those cheap PSU's are meant for office computers , that's what they are designed for , not for high demanding gaming systems.
And always double check when installing hardware , i also have learned the hard way long ago , never use memory modules from different brands and types.
I know people who build a complete system within 10 minutes including watercooling(closed circuit) , and i know those same people also blow up a lot regulary lol ( too lazy to read a manual , too much in a hurry to check cables and connections)
BTW nothing personal to op ,so don't feel attacked , it's just a mention of something i always notice with many builders.

Welcome to Hexus wolfsSpirit.

You're quite right to say avoid cheap PSUs for cheapness sake, but the recommendation of blindly going for corsair or gaming PSUs is a little simplistic. Corsair specify PSUs from a number of manufacturers and a range of qualities, according to budget and market. Some of these are excellent. Some of these I'd avoid. There are some other makes that I would recommend in advance of Corsair, depending on the situation.

But your comment about memory modules is intriguing. Different brands and types should work fine together - I've certainly never had any problems as a result of mixing them. Yes, you want the channels to be balanced, but within each channel there's no problem mixing brands or even specifications, as long as you drive them at the lowest common denominator (if youre motherboard doesn't have the option to individually adjust them).

Also fuddam has been on these forums a while - there's no suggestion he has rushed the building, though using ebay as a source of components is for people braver than me!

[watercooled]

It depends what you mean by 'cheap' PSUs? The ones 'meant for office computers' in for example HP/Dell systems tend to be solidly made units from the likes of Delta/Seasonic/Fortron/etc. The cheap PSUs with a tendency to explode on the other hand, well they're just cheap rubbish often made with no thought for safety or reliability, and cannot be thrown into the same group as the 'office' PSUs.

Memory of different brands or types should be fine provided they're of correct specification. The likes of Corsair do not make their own memory ICs, and source them from DRAM manufacturers e.g. Hynix, Elpida, Samsung, Micron, etc - and there's no guarantee two 'identical' kits from Corsair will even use memory from the same manufacturer.

Even across channels it doesn't always matter if you mix and match; worst case you might end up running in single-channel mode, probably just for a part of the memory, but besides potential performance issues, there should be no risk in doing so.

[fuddam]

Well, some feedback. The machine was a self build from 2006, and PSU hadn't ever given grief.

Had to replace PSU. Got me a pretty slick 650W BE QUIET from Scan. Impressed with the quality - Vorsprung Durch Technik, lol. VERY quiet, only way I can easily know it's working is to check the fan, but even then, doesn't always need to spin, apparently.

Anyway, all plugged in, nothing worked.

Removed all plugs except for mobo 24 pin & 4 pin. PSU spins up but nothing on the CPU fan
Asus LED glows red at the bottom of the board, but no other behaviour.

Removed all RAM etc, looked for scorch marks, but no joy. Seems like a complete mobo replacement, and even then, don't know if CPU is ok. Have seen a few cheap socket 775 boards on ebay, which I might try as a replacement.

Any recommendations before I do?

Thanks.

[Taniniver]

There really isn't much you can do in these circumstances other than replace components one at a time until you can isolate what has failed and what hasn't. Of course, it helps if you have any spares lying around or even if you can borrow them from someone just to test.

Out of interest, what was the PSU that failed? Was it one of those cheap no name brand type affairs, or was it a decent one from one of the big names?

[fuddam]

The old PSU was one of the best - made by EYE-T ELECTRONIC CO, LTD.

Awesome, right?

[fuddam]

double post.

[MaddAussie]

Cant hurt to try a CMOS reset

[watercooled]

The old PSU was one of the best - made by EYE-T ELECTRONIC CO, LTD.

Awesome, right?

Ahh...

Well it's the obvious suspect, but it seems a bit coincidental that it happened immediately after a RAM upgrade. RAM really doesn't draw that much power; if this had happened after a CPU/GPU upgrade it would make more sense, but an extra watt or two?