RMA'ing from a bundled item.

Razor-BladE

Razor-BladE

Razor-BladE

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So about a year ago when i first built my pc, i bought the Antec Sonata III, which came with the Earthwatts 500w. I accidentally crapped out the psu by chopping a wire in the fan, so then i bought the Corsair HX 520w, because i cba to wait to see if it would successfully RMA.

So this summer, I have time and i'm probably going to see if they'll RMA it, even though it's my fault (obviously not going to tell them that; just gonna bs a story).

But there's a small problem.. on the antec website it says if you want to rma an item from a bundled item, then you need to send all items back.
I have the sonata III case.. but i sprayed it black inside (originally silver).
So my question is, would they still accept it to rma it?
And if i said it was working, and now it isn't, would they take my story and send me a replacement even though there's a chopped up wire in there?
 
Can you solder a wire of the same colour as the cut one in place? I take it psu remains dead ever with the wires joined together, bit confused as to how cutting a fan wire killed it. Any more details? I've wanted to change the fan in a psu before, but was too cowardly.

I think you either contact Antec about rma'ing one, contact about rma'ing both saying you spray painted the case, or fix the psu wire as neatly as you can do then rma without mentioning cause of failure. I'd be inclined to do the last one.
 
well theres only one way to find out, just call em and ask that's it.
If they were willing to simply rma the psu then it all depends on how they analyse the fault, I would imagine though that a clearly cut internal wire would be fairly obvious of user fault.

Like i say though just get in touch
 
But forgot to mention, which is the odd bit, that it still supplies enough power to the components; all fans spin up, optical drive light comes on, hard drives spin up, mobo lights up, graphics card fan spins.
So my guess is that it messed with the voltages, and doesn't supply enough volts to let it boot?
 
Was this a deliberate change, or getting the wire caught in something sharp? I'm curious as to what part of the supply has failed, and whether it's repairable.
Melting the ends probably won't work, as it's likely to go black. if it's obviously burnt, and it's partway down the cable then it'll be difficult to argue it as a manufacturing fault
 
^ I don't get what you mean by whether it was a deliberate change.. what change?
The wire got caught (at least i think it was), on the case fan. First time switching it, a weird sound and a great puff of plasticy smoke/dust out of the rear of the case.
 
Ahh, that's bad luck. I was wondering if you'd tried to wire something into it. I'm not sure that qualifies as your fault, so rma might be valid after all. I suggest a different tactic to the previous one, plead ignorance.

Something along the lines of there was a noise and smoke came out of the back, one of my friends said it must be the psu that's dead. He tried it with a new one, and the system works fine. You can see one of the wires coming out looks damaged, but you've no idea how that could have happened because there's nothing sharp in a computer. Please help!

Sometimes ignorance helps. I've returned a flash drive that I'm well aware I killed with dd combined with formatting tools by insisting 'it just doesn't work anymore, I thought these things were indestructible, it must be faulty". Helps that I could do that in person.
 
Sorry for the bad quality.. was done with my phone.. mum's got the camera :/

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That molex just before the 4-pin connector still works btw.
 
It looks like there has been a short circuit on that yellow wire (normally 12v DC), which explains the charring on the inside of the insulation. That is consistent with cutting the wire and the cable touching either another wire or the metal work of your case. It's possible that this would blow a fuse inside the PSU, but a lot of cheap electronics dont bother with fuses and have sacrificial resistors which just burn out and cant be replaced (In which case it's never going to work again).

Do you need a floppy drive? if not cut off the cables at the previous connector and tape them up so you cant touch the metal and so they cant touch each other.

You'd have a case for returning it if it was inside a complete PC, return it to the manufacturer as say they didn't protect the cable properly, if you built it yourself it's your fault. How could a PSU manufacturer stop this happening? use armoured cables?
 
I'm gonna try see if they will rma it anyway. But thanks for the info :)

Bespatter said:
Do you need a floppy drive? if not cut off the cables at the previous connector and tape them up so you cant touch the metal and so they cant touch each other.
Click to expand...

Nope, but no point doing that if it doesn't work.
 
Antec are usually very good in replacing items on your word, but the more people who abuse it, the less likely the are to be so forgiving. Not sure if this is what happened with Asus, but they won't deal directly with end-users for some items, wouldn't suprise me if it was because of bad RMAs.

Oh, and Karma will get you, it always does!
 
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