PSU went poof!

Dodge777 · 17 May 2007 at 21:46

Hey all,

My parents tell me that when they came back from holiday today, they tried turning on the computer and it just went, to directly quote them, "poof". Sounds like a dead PSU in my view. It now won't even turn on and then's no light on the mobo apparently even when connected to the mains. What do you guys think?

So I guess if it is a dead PSU, which I imagine it is, I need to order them a new one. The computer uses a p4 3.2Ghz prescott, 1gb ram, 17 inch tft monitor, x800 pro GPU, and er... think that's it. Oh, and the mobo is socket 478. So basicaly I'm looking for a really quiet PSU which fits this description. Tagan maybe? Watts? Around 420 or 450W?

Please advise. Thanks in advance.

Foehammer2003 · 17 May 2007 at 22:51

Just a thought, but you might want to check that the rest of the hardware is ok still, and that the PSU hasn't taken the rest of the rig to the land of crispyness also. I'm presuming it was a generic PSU?

shine · 18 May 2007 at 00:26

Foehammer2003 said:
Just a thought, but you might want to check that the rest of the hardware is ok still, and that the PSU hasn't taken the rest of the rig to the land of crispyness also. I'm presuming it was a generic PSU?

What he said. There is no point spending money until you know which components have gone.

t31os · 18 May 2007 at 01:02

Sounds like a PSU problem though in my opinion, just fixed a PC yesterday with the same problem, dead generic PSU, luckily i had a spare which i let them have cheap.

Only way to test is to borrow a PSU from another PC, or test the maybe dead one on other components, though i'm not sure i'd want to plug in a potentially faulty PSU to my rig, incase it had some life left and felt like destroying my components to.

If it went poof, there's one easy way to tell if its the PSU, smell the back of it, there's usually a quite prominent burnt smell to it, or at least there has been whenever i've smelt a recently killed/died PSU.