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So, like the thread title says: my power-horse computer died because it's PSU just exploded. :angry:
Wifey was using the Windows 7 calculator when suddenly i heard a LOUD sound (i was in the next room and i sounded like something heavy felt into the floor); came right fast and saw, for my horror, lots of white smoke coming from every vent of the case...

 

i immediately check what happened (i asked wifey if she divided by zero :rofl:) and saw electrolytic liquid everywhere in the mainboard, cpu heatsinker, case plexiglass window (checked the PSU and it was still hot and had the power filter capacitor blown off - it was an OCZ SteathXstreamer 600W)..

 

i've spend the whole afternoon cleaning the case, the mainboard and everything to ensure there was not a single bit of electrolytic fluid laying around.

 

so finally i've powered on the mainboard (Asus M4A89GTD Pro) because i had an extra PSU hanging around (Corsair CS600W; just tested last month, working great) but only the green LED turns on; if i power on the button the CPU fan turns on and them OFF, while the mainboard Green LED is still on.

 

i've removed everything (ssd, memories, gfx card, etc.), just left the psu connected to the mainboard and still the same symthoms; CPU fan turns on then off in just a couple of seconds.

 

i think the mainboard is dead; hopefully it's just the PSU and the mainboard, because if it was the HDDs/SSDs, CPU and gfx card...it's gonna be expensive to fix.

 

btw: no warranty as i had that PSU since 2008 (almost sure) and the whole system i built in 2010.

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Perhaps the cooling fan in the power supply failed and caused it to overheat, or maybe just a faulty capacitor. I've never had one explode but I did have a power supply fan go out once and it overheated and smelled like the computer was on fire. Hope you can salvage it; I would test the video card, RAM and drives in a working computer. Sounds like the motherboard may have been damaged unfortunately. Maybe try reseating the RAM and double check all your cables (I once forgot to plug in the Aux CPU power connector and couldn't figure out why my system wouldn't boot up).

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I guessed OCZ from the title.

 

If fans keep moving without display, Try removing RAM chips. Clean their ends and swap them while inserting back. This is the very basic thing which works for me and others everytime. If not then you have a bad motherboard or graphics card.

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If she was using the Windows 7 calculator, I would like to know what kind of calculation she was doing to make the PSU explode.

 

i asked her if she divided by zero...she looked at me like "really?" :laugh:

 

I had the exact same thing happen to me.  You need reset your CMOS. A quick 5 minute fix  ;)

 

did that; still no go. I even removed the board from the case fearing a short might avoid powering on, but i really think it's dead.

 

Perhaps the cooling fan in the power supply failed and caused it to overheat, or maybe just a faulty capacitor. I've never had one explode but I did have a power supply fan go out once and it overheated and smelled like the computer was on fire. Hope you can salvage it; I would test the video card, RAM and drives in a working computer. Sounds like the motherboard may have been damaged unfortunately. Maybe try reseating the RAM and double check all your cables (I once forgot to plug in the Aux CPU power connector and couldn't figure out why my system wouldn't boot up).

 

my best bet. i once saw this exact situation, but it was in 2005 and it was a very crappy PSU (mind you that now OCZ PSU are having a high failure ratio; back when i bought this one it was a very good one indeed); back then almost all the components died with the PSU, so i hope this is not the case :s :cry: :angry:

Also i've done the reseating of all the components and cables; sounds like the board is dead. :/

I guessed OCZ from the title.

 

If fans keep moving without display, Try removing RAM chips. Clean their ends and swap them while inserting back. This is the very basic thing which works for me and others everytime. If not then you have a bad motherboard or graphics card.

 

right now only one RAM DIMM is inserted but the behavior is the same with or without the RAM (doesn't matter which one i put, it's same). most likely a dead mainboard :/

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Did she?

 

lol no because everybody knows that if someone divides by zero then the world would explode, not just my PSU :laugh:

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Pics of the explosion pls.

 

i have pics of the PSU, right now is in the trash.

 

If you aren't getting any POST beeps regardless of RAM being in there.. I am sorry but...

 

yeah, i expected that. Gonna call Asus support tomorrow morning to see if the warranty covers this.

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If she was using the Windows 7 calculator, I would like to know what kind of calculation she was doing to make the PSU explode.

 

Was probably the windows 8 RT calculator instead. That fullscreen calculator can stress a PC and push it over its limit.

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yeah, i expected that. Gonna call Asus support tomorrow morning to see if the warranty covers this.

Tell ASUS that the mobo just died. No need to tell them your PSU explosion story. Otherwise they may not be as co operative.
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I had a (cheap) PC case wich killed my PSU. The GPU (9600 GT) was acting as a stove , the CPU and AMD Phenom X3 OC providing again more heat and the case had no airflow.

After watching a movie I decided I should game a bit, had some fun for a few minutes and BAM! (spark sound here Tsk.Tsk.Tsk.) Dead. The whole case interior was black but I managed to save the rest of the components. Since that day I always buy Seasonic PSUs , I am very very pleased with what they offer!

 

 

 

I think your mobo died because your PSU had no voltage protection, pay attention to PSU features next time.

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I guessed OCZ from the title.

 

If fans keep moving without display, Try removing RAM chips. Clean their ends and swap them while inserting back. This is the very basic thing which works for me and others everytime. If not then you have a bad motherboard or graphics card.

 

And how exactly did you guess that? Do you even know which rebrand that PSU is to guess it? This has happened to the best of the best PSU's out there. Pff...

 

Anyway, back to the topic, one thing is to call Asus, that won't help since they will probably tell you the fault isn't their board but another component doing harm to their mobo so your best bet is to give a call to OCZ or send them an email and tell them what has happened and see where it goes from there.

 

Not telling Asus about the PSU won't help what so ever, you probably need to send the board to them and well, they are not stupid you know. Mostly it's easy to tell if an external compononent has done damage to the PCB (or the components on it), while you might not notice it people who work day in and day out with it might find it within minutes. Been there, done that.

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Some news!

 

Tell ASUS that the mobo just died. No need to tell them your PSU explosion story. Otherwise they may not be as co operative.

well i could but unfortunately the warranty for either the mainboard (Asus) and PSU (OCZ) has expired in December.. not only that but OCZ is in a real mess; the storage part is now owned by Toshiba and the PSU part is now owned by pcpower, so if it was under warranty i could talk with them to see if they would honor it, but since it is out of warranty...

 

You got bang for your buck. Sorry to hear it.

:/

 

If you're mainboard, cpu, ram , etc was hosed due to that PSU, I'd fire off an email to OCZ and see what happens. Never know, you might get new components.

 

it's out of warranty :/

 

Pics of the explosion pls.

 

I came here looking for a picture of an exploded PSU.

 

/disappointed

 

so here are they; in the first pic you can see clearly the power filter capacitor has swollen to the rupture point and in the second one you can see it all "wet" (in fact it's the electrolytic that was spreed from the capacitor; most of it vaporized into white smoke...) and damaged; sorry for those that wanted to see a PSU like it came from a Michael Bay movie. :laugh:

 

Anyways, i went into buying a MSI board; apart from the blown up PSU and dead mainboard, everything is working as should (i've tested every component). So right now i'm using a Corsair CX600 and a new 970A-G46 MSI board (i wanted a newer Asus, but it wasn't available, only a Gigabyte (that is incompatible with the rest of the hardware i have) and some ASRock's boards (since i owned 2 ASRock mainboards and both of them died from capacitor leakage after 4 years of use i wont buy anything from that brand so soon).

 

right now i'm happy with the new board; thanks for some of the funny posts and some insightful :rolleyes: comments.


btw: sorry for the quality of the pics.

post-13369-0-12960400-1396754693.jpg

post-13369-0-00870300-1396754817.jpg

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lol no because everybody knows that if someone divides by zero then the world would explode, not just my PSU :laugh:

so true...so true.

 

I started to do it once when I was feeling really low - got to the point where I was about to hit "enter" - I noticed a strange vortex appearing in my ceiling - I knew something was wrong because if there is a "hereafter" the vortex would be on my floor.  I got scared, and deleted everything.

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Take it out back and record yourself shooting holes in it with various guns, crack off a few jokes, then put the video on YouTube.  You'll get rich in no time, :P

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Take it out back and record yourself shooting holes in it with various guns, crack off a few jokes, then put the video on YouTube.  You'll get rich in no time, :p

:laugh:

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