My computer used to do this little thing where randonly it would turn off. I did a bunch of stuff (i.e. Reseat the heatsink, Apply new thermal paste, get new ram,etc.) which then lead me and several people across multiple boards to think my power supply was bad or dirty. Over the weekend i pulled the power supply out opened it up and took a qtip and a little air to it (No Water & no moving/removing of any parts). I then put my power supply back in and tried to reconnect everything. Soon i saw that I was either previously over compensating with power connections or did not connect enough but, I checked and double checked and eventually thought it was good enough to turn on. I hit the power button and nothing, It didn't turn on. I tried to connect and reconnect again and suddenly it happened I hit the power but and then I heard a sound like static or electric come from somewhere and the smell of burn or smoke, nothing came on. I Ignored it and hit the power again and suddenly everything came on but the Motherboard didn't post. Now, from what i know it seems that the burn was me frying my hard drives, not sure if anything else was effected. My question is. 1. Can i save my hard drives. I tried freezing them and i got nothing after about 2/3 hours in freezer. 2. Did i fry anything else ? 3. How did i fry the hard drives/ anything else, what did i do wrong, what would have cause this to happen ? 4. Is it safe to just buy new hard drives and start over using parts from my PC or should i just scrap the whole system and start from new. I just dont want to buy new components and blow them out like I did before
I know its off topic and completely irrelevant to your questions but this reminds me of my washer/dryer..one day it blew up..big bang..little puff of smoke n everything..after taking it apart and looking at the motor i found a frizzled mouse on the motor lol.. good times..expensive mouse tho
Sounds like something in the PC was destroyed by a fault in the PSU. Random shutdowns are only typically caused by faulty PSUs and overheating CPUs. An overheating CPU will never cause any damage. A dodgy PSU will. By taking it apart it's likely you made the fault worse, which has overloaded something in the system, hence the smoke (and likely, a disgusting smell). Freezing hard drives is only necessary when there has been a mechanical fault with the drive, not if they have been damaged by an electrical fault, and it is a short term fix, which typically allows a short period of access before irreparable long-term damage. Your hard disks could well have survived the PSU, but you may have damaged or destroyed them by freezing them. Get a new power supply first of all (and not another bad one either, buy from a proper brand like Corsair) and then see what works.
Wow... thank you guys Im hoping i didn't screw anything up. Just need to get a couple things out. Funny thing is i was about to dump this system anyways. So a couple answers to previous posts. Before i did the freezer thing i did try a IDE encloser and hooked it up through USB i didn't even get the hard drive to start. Tried another hard drive and it ran fine. So my last ditch effort is i was going to buy a new circuit board from PCB solutions. Any word as to if this is a good idea/bad idea or not. your help is greatly appreciated.
there are 2 circuit boards on hard drives, the external we see & the internal inside the drive case. the 1 you are buying is the external so 50/50 which is fried tho lean to external board.
If there is no activity at all from the drive (no clicks, nothing) in an external enclosure then it sounds like the power section of the drive has been damaged by the PSU (this is quite common). Given this, you might get very lucky with a PCB replacement, or if not, the drive is toast I'm afraid.
Hey you guys have been great im in the process of trying to recoup here ... lol. I was just curious what power supply you recommend i see corsair was mentioned i was thinking of getting a(CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2) for high end gaming, is this enough or would you recommend different. BTW, i used to have a thermaltake 1200 watt power supply are those known to crap out ?. Thanks again guys.
The Thermaltake Toughpower units aren't bad, they're just often very noisy (and not 1200 watts either). Corsair's 850W unit is good, but 850W is still an outrageous amount of power. 850W is enough to run a heavily overclocked quad core processor, six hard drives and 4 high-end graphics cards.
Really, wow.. seems like im way over shooting it, sounds like im going to be spending much more money than i need too. Any reccomendation would be great so im just going to throw this on here if you have any comments on this build i would be grateful. PSU CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 Motherboard ASUS P6X58D Premium LGA 1366 Intel X58 PROCESSOR Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz VIDEO CARD Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 (PCI-e 2.0, 2GB, GDDR3) MEMORY Kingston HyperX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000) HARD DRIVE Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB OPTICAL DRIVE Pioneer Black Model BDR-205BKS - OEM I plan on gaming but not crazy at all. occasionally i would like to jump on something big when it comes out like if another crysis hits i dont want to have to go get another computer. But the most use this thing gets is in film editing on like adobe premiere (I know a mac is the best thing for that but i love my PC's). oh, and i download alot. I tend to fill a TB pretty easy (Kind of a Digital pack rat) most of my video files i try and get in HD too. So any help to get me started would be great.
I dont think that cpu will work on that board, for that cpu you need socket 775 motherboard not 1366. Keep the 1366 board but change your cpu to an i7 chip. better still get a socket 1156 board and an i5 chip. alot cheaper.
Drop the ASUs mobo. Poor reliability. The corsair PSU is over kill, and the RE3 is meant for raid set ups. Get a 1 TB Caviar Black. Get a msi,gigabyte,or biostar mobo. Whats your total budget?
I didn't realise they still made the HD4850X2, or do you already have that? It's a bit of a waste of time to buy new, as it's a humungous, very noisy, rather experimental card which was good for its time, but now a single HD5850 will be more powerful, much smaller, quieter, more reliable, etc. etc. You've chosen a Core 2 CPU with a Core i7 motherboard, these won't work together. I'd advise against Core 2s for a new gaming build as they're getting long in the tooth and have since been replaced by the i5/i7, and additionally for video work I would strongly recommend a quad core over the antiquated dual core. The motherboard chosen is also way over the top even if you did buy an i7 CPU (and for a modest game system, an i5 would be a better choice), and I tend not to recommend Asus motherboards because their build quality is rather unpredictable. You've chosen very fast memory, which isn't of fundamental, but only 2GB, where 4GB of slower memory would make much more sense. The Hard disk is an enterprise model which is not required for a normal PC system, and lastly the Power supply is greatly overstated. Starting again, I'd recommend: PSU: Corsair CMPSU-550VX 550W Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD4 Processor: Core i5 750 Video Card: Radeon HD5850 Memory: Corsair 4GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) - remember to choose memory rated as 1.65V or 'i5 compatible' Hard drive: Western Digital WD1001FALS Optical drive is fine, assuming it's quite cheap - sometimes Pioneer drives aren't, remember to check prices against common LG/Sony Optiarc alternatives.
Like i said you guys are F***ing great ive never had such assistance before.. to answer a question posted early. I really dont have budget if i wanted to pick up and get all the peices in a day 500 to 600 would be easy. I usally pick em' up in peices though so 1000 to 1500 would be probably max i would go without just gettin a damn alienware .. lol ..
Building a system piece by piece only really works if it forms a coherent upgrade from an existing system. If you're migrating to a new socket technology (most people are) then generally, at least CPU, memory and motherboard all have to be acquired at the same time. If you're upgrading from a well-designed system, this won't be difficult, but if it's a cheap off-the-shelf system or a very underpowered PC by comparison (tiny case, low-rated power supply) then building almost the entire PC in one go is about the only option. I tend to advise against people buying components they can't use unless they buy more several weeks later as new technologies appear, prices drop, and they end up wasting money by leaving components unused on their shelf. Also, you would be amazed how much an Alienware comparable to a $1500 homebuild would actually cost. I'm willing to bet it'll turn up around $2400...
An alienware would be a waste of money compared to what you could build on an alienware budget. Alienware isnt what it used to be and its pretty much just a high end Dell now using some(but not all) cheap parts. And if I understood you right, your best to just save your money and buy all at once. In the high end video card department ATI is done or close to done rolling out there next gen, DX11 cards. Nvidia, not that it matters, hasnt rolled out a single next gen card yet. Intel is supposed to roll out the Core i9 this year, as well as filling out the core i5 line up and rolling out the core i3s. AMD is rolling out there new chips next year. They look good on paper, but time will tell if they can regain the fans they lost to Intel in recent years. Anyways, my point is technology is rapidly advancing and what we build on a budget today could be outdated by the time you build. Of course if you order half today and half next month your probably safe.
Real quick since you guys have pretty much given me (and my wife thanks you .. lol) the drive to go buy a great brand new computer .. i currently have a Antec Nine Hundred case .. think i should grab something different ?, any adivce on one ?
The Nine Hundred is not my favourite case in the world, but it's plenty sufficient for the vast majority of PC systems.
