RATS!

[+pcpilot 181]

Im on my computer surfing the other day and suddenly get a PHFFFTTT!!! and a puff of smoke come up from behind. Everything goes dead... Determine the power supply fried. Its the second one Ive gotten from Orion that did that. It had 585 watts peak power so might not had been enough for the machine. Not sure what continuous power was. This was a AMD 64X2 machine with a single Nvidia 8600 video card and Audigy sound. Shouldnt be too much of a power hog. So got a PC POwer power supply at 610 watts continuous and got it hooked up and going... :moil: Everything seems fine on the mobo but nearly all the peripherals are dead! No mouse, keyboard, and worst of all, no more ch pro stick or peddals or TrackIR!!! AAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!! Rends garment... How in the heck can a mobo survive a fry job and not the peripherals... Man, I aint got the money to go out and buy more of these toys...now excuse me while I go beat my head against the wall.

[GreyCap 0]

Man, now you got me nervous... my power supply is a weakie. Your peripherals are dead for good, or is it just a software thing, like all you need to do is a reformat?

[+Erik 1,805]

Sounds odd to me. Almost like one of your rails in the PS is no good.

 

I'd consider taking it back and trying a second power supply before saying everything else is bad. To check maybe you can move some of those things that don't work to another computer and try them?

 

Personally I buy OCZ power supplies. I like their 12V 4 rail design and modular wiring setup. Check newegg.com. ;)

 

E

[Gr.Viper 131]

How in the heck can a mobo survive a fry job and not the peripherals...

USB got a surge of voltage, perhaps. AFAIK, power supply gives output through separate blocks for each voltage. Some for HDDs, some for MB, some for USB.

Or, yeah, as Erik says, a rail could simply kick the bucket.

 

Speaking of...

My 1 TB external HDD decided to quit living a couple of days ago. Had to buy a new one (hopefully 1+1 TB RAID 1 will last longer). Luckily I managed to recover all data that was worth keeping...

[+Erik 1,805]

My 1 TB external HDD decided to quit living a couple of days ago. Had to buy a new one (hopefully 1+1 TB RAID 1 will last longer). Luckily I managed to recover all data that was worth keeping...

 

 

Bigger drive = more heat.

 

More heat = quicker dead drive.

 

Add cooling, remove air flow restrictions, physically separate the drives for air flow and so on.

[zmatt 2]

Im on my computer surfing the other day and suddenly get a PHFFFTTT!!! and a puff of smoke come up from behind. Everything goes dead... Determine the power supply fried. Its the second one Ive gotten from Orion that did that. It had 585 watts peak power so might not had been enough for the machine. Not sure what continuous power was. This was a AMD 64X2 machine with a single Nvidia 8600 video card and Audigy sound. Shouldnt be too much of a power hog. So got a PC POwer power supply at 610 watts continuous and got it hooked up and going... :moil: Everything seems fine on the mobo but nearly all the peripherals are dead! No mouse, keyboard, and worst of all, no more ch pro stick or peddals or TrackIR!!! AAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!! Rends garment... How in the heck can a mobo survive a fry job and not the peripherals... Man, I aint got the money to go out and buy more of these toys...now excuse me while I go beat my head against the wall.

 

What brand are you using? El cheapo PSUs that have a high out put will fry before they get there. I recommend using Rosewill, Corsair, Seasonic and Pc Power and Cooling. Of those Rosewill is the cheapest and they make decent power supplies. The other three are known for making rock solid Psus that last forever. I have a Corsair 550vx, it's powering a overclock e7200, 2 hard drives, 2 dvd drives, 2 radeon HD 4850s (also overclocked), and 4 gigs of OCZ gold's no sweat.

 

I've seen many power supplies fail, i had a friend who went through 3 power supplies in the course of 2 months. A quality 500watt psu should cost you $80 or so nowadays, if you are sepnding $20 on your psu you are buying a peice of junk, simple as that.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817139004

 

Depending on the day of the week this psu can go from $100 to $80 so you have to time your purchases.

[+pcpilot 181]

Yeah, it was an Orion brand PSU that fried. The second one I had to do that. Ive got a real nice PC Power PSU now. I thought about the USB thing too. Sure, everything is usb except the keyboard! It fried too! I just dont get it. I tried the mouse and joystick on another computer and they didnt work on it either.

[+Erik 1,805]

Sounds more like static electricity discharge or a power spike than a PS going bad. I suppose anything is possible but I'm betting something happened that caused the PS to go out which also took out your other peripherals. I like to run line conditioners in front of any hardware. That way it takes the brunt of electrical surges and discharges before the actual equipment.

 

Any weird weather in your neck of the woods that could have caused this?

 

Run any UPS or conditioning equipment that has hardware warranties in front of the computer?

[zmatt 2]

Good modern psus Have fuses in them in case of things like that. The psu will be shot but it will save your pc. That same guy who had the bad luck with power supplies had his motherboard fried on the last one. Power supplies are interesting beasts, you would think that they all are made the same but a lot of the cheap ones lack the safety features of the better brands. Corsiar has a set of videos on their website where they show cheap psus blowing up when they try to take them to their full rated load.

 

 

http://www.corsair.com/cinema/movie.aspx?id=622747

 

It's a little biased, but they are right.

[TX3RN0BILL 3]

I've had problems with PC components as well (all the way going to having the mobo fried and taking most components with it), so besides investing in a good PSU (a Chieftec 750W Truepower hog), I invested in a current stabilizer + surge protector, and I'm thinking of getting a UPS as well, just to make the electricity safe for my PC to consume it. Hardware nowadays is very sensitive regarding variations in the electricity they feed upon...

[zmatt 2]

I've had problems with PC components as well (all the way going to having the mobo fried and taking most components with it), so besides investing in a good PSU (a Chieftec 750W Truepower hog), I invested in a current stabilizer + surge protector, and I'm thinking of getting a UPS as well, just to make the electricity safe for my PC to consume it. Hardware nowadays is very sensitive regarding variations in the electricity they feed upon...

 

You think its sensitive today? Back in the 80's you risked frying all the chip on your board if you touched it. I've fried several old micro-controllers while working on little personal embedded projects. Today components can take several thousand volts of static discharge. I've built pcs on shag carpet before, never once had anything fried.

 

BTW I wouldn't really recommend cheiftec psu's either. There are really only 4 brands I trust for consumer grade Power Supplies. Seasonic, Pc Power and Cooling, Rosewill (only for lower end), and Corsair. I would recommend that instead of investing so much in a ups you should put the money into the power supply. UPS's are expensive, lose perofrmance over the years and really are only needed for mission critical systems. Servers and some very important workstations mostly.