PSU blew?

esoteric · 13 Dec 2015 at 13:55

A pop and the electric went out downstairs. Couldn't get power back without unplugging my PC, when I got power back and plugged in the PC I witnessed a white flash at the back of the PSU.

Pretty sure only a PSU component wise can knock out house power like that.

pastymuncher · 13 Dec 2015 at 14:05

Take the pc apart and look for signs of damage starting with the pc. You should be able to smell it if somethings blown inside the psu. Don't switch it on again until you find what it was as you could cause even more damage.

esoteric · 13 Dec 2015 at 14:40

About 2 minutes had passed when I pulled the tower out, I could still smell that particular smell though, trapped air. By the time I put my nose to the PSU the smell was gone, this was when I put the house power back on and replugged the PSU, when I hit the PSU on switch is when I saw the white flash just above the power switch through the PSU ventiliation and the downstairs power went again.

Can't remember exactly when but sometime in the last 2 years I had a PSU go the same way and it was the same brand, OCZ. I didn't rebuy, OCZ, there was a spare in the house I could hot swap. I have no spares left and no shops open today to drive to and get one.

Ah, and no visible damage to any components either.

pastymuncher · 13 Dec 2015 at 17:00

As it tripped the house plus a flash from the rear it is likely to be the psu. If you have a spare swap it out and try it. Hopefully it hasn't killed any other components.

esoteric · 14 Dec 2015 at 11:49

Alright, bought an, EVGA 750W PSU this morning. Everything is up and running but there was a hiccup.

Using all the same leads except for CPU and Mobo because my blown PSU was semi modular, with everything plugged in I got power to the NB and RAM but it wouldn't turn on. Had a flick through the book and it said about using the peripheral port for fans, pumps etc, so I plugged that in and nothing changed. Another look at the book said to not put the split connectors into the PSU which I did do for the GPU so I swapped that around and at the same time just decided to unplug GPU and Sata's from the PSU to see what would happen and it worked. So I plugged GPU back in, tested and it worked, put the SATA's back in and didn't work. So I changed PSU SATA cables to the new ones and redistributed the load to have 2 hard drives on one lead, so 2 HDD's share 1 cable and 2 SSD's share 1 cable, plugged it all back and everything worked.

Different PSU, different internals I suppose on how it delivers it's power. Not something I've experienced before. On my old PSU I had 2 SATA leads powering 4 HDD's and the fans, pumps, etc. I prefer how this EVGA PSU has it set up, makes it less of a cable jungle and easier to see where things are routed.

pastymuncher · 14 Dec 2015 at 13:08

Don't ever use one psu's leads on another psu unless it's exactly the same. Chances are that the pin outs are different and you could end up doing some serious damage.