Recently my PC has become very unstable, and today refused to boot entirely (it appears to power up, by no HDD activity or POST). I was having a look around, and found something bizarre on the power connectors, it appears as though the plastic on the four pin connector has melted and there are scorch marks on the plastic (see attached pic). I don't THINK this has damaged the motherboard yet, but I don't have another PSU to hand at the moment. I will try and get my hands on one. Any reason this would happen except a faulty power supply? Some incorrect voltage setting somewhere in the BIOS maybe? Power surge or soemthing? I dont want to do anymore damage so I think its safest to not try anymore stuff with this PSU..
What connector is that? Could be a massive overload, if so your system's probably dead. Either way that is very very BAD!!! What PSU was it?
agree with pete, looks like to much current has been pulled by something and its just melted the connector, I've heard it can happen if you load up a motherboard with graphics card and you can just melt the 24 pin from to much current being pulled through it trying to power all the cards, hence good boards have molex or 6 pin connectors to provide extra juice to the pcie lanes
It's two of the 12v connectors on the four pin part, and, in fact, the same thing has happened on the 12v rail on the 20 pin connector, so I'd imagine it's something drawing too much on that.. It's an old shuttle PSU, comes on the G5 chassis; I've had it about 5/6 years and have used it most recently for media centre stuff. I suppose its been on for a LOT of hours in that time. I'm not sure what would've over loaded it though? I've only got a TV card and use on board graphics... think I'm going to borrow another PSU and hope for the best!
Could be something in the PSU giving up the ghost and the PSU may be lacking over voltage protection (i believe thats the right over) so it just sprayed your board with voltage...
Just out of completeness, here's the 12v pin on the 20pin connector: So you reckon if I ocnnect another PSU of the same wattage it'd be OK? Or would it be safer to get a bigger wattage?
P4 3.2 ghz, 2gb RAM, uses onboard graphics - not entirely sure what chip, 2 HDD on the SATA power, Philips TV card. I know the Prescotts are pretty heavy on power consumption, so I think that might be one of the issues here...
