MASSIVE hardware failure. The kind that goes BANG! Help!

Not fifteen minutes go my rig died in spectacular fashion.

She's got a stock Phenom 9850, Gigabyte MA790FX-DQ6 Motherboard, 2 x 2GB DDRII PC1066 Ram, ATI HD 4870 512M PCI-Ex, 2 x 500G SATA2 7200RPM 16MB HDD in anAntec 900 with a Thermalake PSU.

I'd just minimized Medieval 2 to check on a download when it switched off, completely dead. I tried re-booting, nothing. I waited about five minutes, checked the cables, nothing. Pulled everything off the powerboard, tried again, still nothing. Completely dead.

I decided to wait, gave it another ten minutes then tried again.

BOOM.

PSU completely blew. God almighty bang, yellow flash then nothing.

I'm not so dense that I can't figure out my rig needs a new PSU. But what else am I in for? Could this affect anything else? ie: am I in for a new mobo or something?

Also, what might have caused it? Rig is one month old, custom built, opened once to install second hard drive.

I know I'm in for a new PSU, but what else could this have affected? Any chance of this shorting out anything else?

And what could have caused it? I've got surge protection, and nothing else in the house seemed to flicker when it happened.

Help me Bit-Tech!

 

A bad capacitor would go bang inside a PSU.

A blown PSU could affect other components, but the only way of knowing for sure is to put another PSU in. It wouldn't hurt to do a visual inspection of the remaining components just to check that there's no surface damage or debris left in the machine.

 

indeed, most of the time you can see any damage that this would cause. Check your motherboard and GPU for any deforming or colouring on the PCBs (easiest to see on the back where there's no stuff in the way).

It is possible for this to have caused damage to any hardware hooked up to the PSU, which is basically everything obviously. There's no way to guess right up front though, and most of the time the hardware survives these things. Good luck!

 

What thermaltake PSU *exactly*? And pics!!

 

An extra metal motherboard mount in a wrong hole will cause a PSU to sparkle beautifully like that....what could happen is the resin , (whatever) , coating on the motherboard could melt and that may have taken time then a revealed wire may have shorted the PSU and ... boom!

 

But it'd do that at poweron, not completely at random.

Sounds like a faulty PSU to me.

 

Never been much of a fan of anything thermaltake tbh.

Tho all psu's good and bad can go, had a rather nice 420w tagan go BOOM and flash a while back.

 

If you're dead lucky, you might get away with just a new PSU, but if you're dead unlucky, you could be in for the entire lot.

Last time a PSU that blew on me, it was just the PSU (I only had blue sparks, though). I think it's time to investigate warranties!

 

Deffo, Warranties... if anything else is damaged perhaps house insurance might come into it?

 

Quite frankly, manufacturing faults would cause that (most likely - seeing as it only did that now, i presume your rig was built perfectly fine, and no components were mounted wrong/whatever else).
What could it have taken with it? quite frankly - everything.
I've lost RAM, CPU, GPU and 2 motherboards to a faulty PSU once before... not cool (for the record, the first motheboard died, so i RMA'd it, then the rest died along with the new motherboard a week later... was a bit of a pain to explain to the place where i bought that i did NOT do anything wrong, and that the shoddy PSU they sold me is to blame for all of it, and therefore i wanted replacements for all of it)....
if you get lucky, though - it's just the PSU. really hard to tell.
Get a new PSU, plug it in, and see... it's the only way.

 

See if you can get a refund and change to a different brand if possible.

 

I've had 3 psu's go bang in all my time using/fixing pc's. Direct replacement of the psu fixed the problem each time.

 

If it was a thermaltake tough power, mine did the same, Worked well for a mionth or two, then when running FFOW the pc shut down, go to reboot and got BSODS, then tried once more and *CRACK-ZZZZZZT-BOOM*, nothing had died though, thankfully, so hopefully none of your stuff will.

 

If it turns out Thermaltake's faulty PSU has killed your whole system, give em' hell 'till they buy you a new one.
Good luck.

 

i had an Antec smart power go bang once, filled my case and room with smoke, and left burn marks on the case. But it was only a cap that blew, everything else was perfectly fine.

 

regarding my idea there may have been an extra motherboard mount on the case

...I did leave an extra motherboard mount in a case and after 6 or 7 monitor blackouts then the picture returning to normal then a few weeks later a few sparks began to emit from the rear of the PSU when I turned the PSU power switch on.
I did not guess the problem may have been the extra mount shorting and the sparks got worse.

.....I became sort of scared to go anywhere near the PSU switch...one last daring time proved too much and the PSU blew...very loudly!
It took all that time for the motherbord coating, the resin?? , to melt to uncover a motherboard wire.
So the problems could increase from small ones in the case of an extra motherboard mount in the case.
... to the ultimate problem and over a period of a few months... to a big bang ! ... ow ....
I am guessing the extra mount was only barely touching the motherboard or maybe even certain movements were forcing the mount to touch the motherboard , and maybe the case rocked or something when I moved the PSU power switch and perhaps the case wobbled on its feet , which are loose feet from memory....

 

It was a Thermaltake 430 watt PSU, luckily, it's still under warranty; so are the rest of my components. Anyone in Australia interested in a custom rig should try these guys: www.ddcomputer.com.au, they might operate out of a garage in the middle of nowhere but they're replacing the PSU and checking the entire rig for me.

 

430 watts?? That's not enough horse power for your rig. It needs about 700 watts.

 

yeap 430 watts is really really not enough for that...!

 

wow, that is a coincidence...the PSU that blew up

...in my PC was a Thermaltake 430W.