PC went bang

MagicIRL

My brother was playing away on his PC last night when it just cut power and dropped.

There's a smell of bruning inside it. I've opened it up and can't see any physical damage, and suspect the failure is with the PSU. Both the PSU and the GPU were incredibly hot when the PC was opened.

I'm wondering what the chances are that other components in the machine are Donald Ducked as a result of the PSU going like that?

Kencollins

Most PSU are designed to fail and take one for the team, rather than fail and take everything with it!

Hopefully the output protection stage did it's job and it didnt output too much of a surge.

Is the case air flow restricted...dusty, lots of cables ect?

Bepolite

Was the GPU unusually hot, or could boil water hot - that's how hot some of them get - hot.

MagicIRL

Airflow isn't great, but I wouldn't say it is poor either. The GPU was hot to touch, but not so hot that you would burn yourself on it. I know GPUs do tend to run hot (He has a 660 GTX), so I'm not overly concerned with the GPU's temp.

Any recommendations on how I could test the PSU? I don't really want to plug it in to the wall and try and boot incase it makes things worse.

Bepolite

MagicIRL wrote: »

Airflow isn't great, but I wouldn't say it is poor either. The GPU was hot to touch, but not so hot that you would burn yourself on it. I know GPUs do tend to run hot (He has a 660 GTX), so I'm not overly concerned with the GPU's temp.

Any recommendations on how I could test the PSU? I don't really want to plug it in to the wall and try and boot incase it makes things worse.

A voltage meter but if something went pop I'd be replacing the PSU even if it did still work.

MagicIRL

Bepolite wrote: »

A voltage meter but if something went pop I'd be replacing the PSU even if it did still work.

Without a doubt, but I just don't even know if the PSU is the cause of the issue. It certainly felt like and smelt like it was!

I'm just concerned he'll have lost his motherboard, cpu, ram, gpu and/or hdd as a result.

Bepolite

MagicIRL wrote: »

Without a doubt, but I just don't even know if the PSU is the cause of the issue. It certainly felt like and smelt like it was!

I'm just concerned he'll have lost his motherboard, cpu, ram, gpu and/or hdd as a result.

The only way to know is a new PSU really. I had the same thing happen, ended up buying a crap PSU to test, other components indeed fecked, then ended up having to buy another (decent) PSU. I'd just buy a decent PSU to start with now and then get the other bits if needed.

A friend with a rig you can try bit out in would be one way, or borrow a PSU.

papu

If you smelt burning then something has melted , I'd very carefully open up , or look into the PSU and see if you can find any damage , inspect all the caps on the motherboard and GPU and make sure none of them show signs of overloading.

I've had power boxes go before , if you turn it on and something has melted / shorted through it'll probably blow a fuse in the house, and perhaps other components too.

uncle_sam_ie

What make is the PSU?