I screwed up, man. I bought a UV light at CompUSA to spruce up my case. I hooked it up no problem, but I wanted to see how it looked from different positions in the case (I thought this was a bad idea at the time). After about 5 mins I put the light next to my motherboard and was then pulling it out from behind a couple of cables. I thought I heard a "crack" noise, but this I thought was from my plastic wrapping on my power cables. A few seconds later my Antec TrueBlue 480W power supply blew! Fire, sparks, smoke, the works! I was totally dumbfounded, since this is a new system I spent about $2500 on building. It has been working great for a few weeks now. OK, lesson 1: Don't mess with with anything inside the case with the power on. YES, I knew that. Also, I'm always touching the case to discharge any static. Other than somehow this light blew the power supply, the only thing I can think of is static. I don't know much about electronics, but is that what may have happened?!?! A little static blew the whole damn thing? To my total and utter amazement, Iput my old 400W power supply in my case and my computer appears to be OK!!! I can't believe this. I thought it was a total loss. Well, any comments are greatly appreciated.
It sounds like you got a bad power supply. I have a potential fire waiting here with a 300 watt power supply powering (1) DVD burner (1) DVD drive (1) CDRW (1) CD (3) 80mm Fans (1) UV blacklight (1) Romtec Hard drive Switch (3) Hard drives (1) floppy and much more. And this Power supply came this full tower $60 case. If I were you I would call and see if they will give you a new one. Plead your case.
I really haven't heard any stories of decent power supplies blowing up, which doesn't bode well for the quality of your fairly expensive antec supply... Happens quite often for cheap supplys, if I had 10p for every generic 250/300W supply that popped I'd have a fair few 10p's Glad you system survived... Rob. p.s. I moved this to the distaster forum too.
I bought it from newegg a couple weeks ago, so I already got an RMA for it, so I don't think that's the problem. Mainly I'm worried about my system, but I guess if I don't notice anything weird happening now, I guess it's ok. I've been thinking about whether I blew the supply because I was drawing too much power rather than some kind of static discharge?? The reason I bought this "TRUE" 480W supply was to add stuff like this without any problems. Does it MATTER how much I put on a particular power "line"? I believe I only had 2 CD roms on this cable, 2 80mm fans, and the UV light. Shouldn't this supply easily handle all of this equipment?? 2.8P4 15K Cheetah 180GB Western Digital CD RW DVD 4 Case Fans ATI 9700 (takes some extra power as well).
Yeah easily, I've run about as much from a 250W supply*... Rob. *only for a week, I doubt it would have lasted long!
At least your getting a new one. I'm glad to here that. But, I would think that a qauality power supply would handle this stuff better than my cheepy does...
Another thing, aren't these things suppose to shut down or die a little less violently if you're drawing too much power? I remember one time my 4-pin molex connector seemed to discharged on my case's side panel when I was putting it back on and my old psu shut down. I got scared, but I then powered it on and all was well.
You're right man. There is nothing that you should be able to do to that power supply (except hitting with a hammer while still plugged in) that would make it do what it did. I don't think I will be ordering a Antec 480 watt True Blaze anytime soon
Do you guys know if a static discharge could have caused this? I really don't know much about eletronics. This is the only thing I ever blew up, short of a transistor on one of those radio shack kits when I was a kid. I'm usually very careful. Could I have passed a charge from my hand, through the plastic uv rod into the psu through one of the power cables????
Nope, if a static discharge from you caused your psu to explode I'll eat my hat* Rob. *I don't actually have a hat, but oh well.
I appreciate your comments. Mmmm... no static, eh?? What about my other question. Does it matter how many devices you put on a single power "line"? I have (well, had) like 4 or so separate lines with the 4-pin molex connectors.
I'm going to say definitely no here too. Because I have so much stuff plugged in and still no fire. Every fan you buy has pass thrus. Y cablles are everywhere.
I severly doubt that, I have 2 cathodes and some 8 fans chained with Y cables off a single molex, and, while i am sure that this is terrible, i have had no problems with my enermax 350. been chugging along for a year and a half now, and i have managed to short it out many times
I think with some pretty decent PSU's it could cause a problem if the load were sufficient (but even then it should only trip the supply, not blow it)... this said I don't think the load you put on your power supply was enough to put this into the realms of possibility. So no then Rob.
Thanks again for all of the comments. Ugh, I don't know what to do now. Maybe I should just return the damn light.
Its very possible that your fooling around with the cables by your motherboard may have short-circuited something, possibly on your motherboard. Low resistance circuit + high wattage circuit = heat then fire. I kinda doubt this is what happened tho, since your mobo doesnt sound like its screwed up. But sorts of strange things can happen when you short circuit stuff on your mobo, I accidently short circuited my mobo once and it cleared my BIOS... go figure.
My BIOS was not reset or anything. I feel extremely lucky. The last thing I remember doing was touching the plastic end of the light on one of the power lines. There is a plastic "block" at the end of light. Is it possible to short something by putting the end of the UV light against the power line?
