Can a bad PSU kill a Hard drive?

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Amadeo Joaquin

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Nov 20, 2014
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I recently got a used Corsair 600w PSU from craiglist. After doing all the installation, my hard drive starting giving me a bad smell. I tried using another older hard drive and it also died. Is it possible that this psu burn my hard drives?
 
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LostAlone

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Jan 3, 2011
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I mean... It's possible, since zapping any component with too much power will break it, but I wouldn't say it's all that likely. If it's burning out parts then it should be burning out anything connected via molex or sata power, and potentially even burning the motherboard too, so I wouldn't suspect the PSU first. Multiple failures do happen just by themselves. Still this is clearly not something to mess around with because obviously this kind of failure is extremely expensive for you.

I can't really think of a way to test it without a multimeter or something though, which puts you in a tough situation. Maybe take it to a good PC shop and ask them to test it for you?
 
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homerlvsbeer

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Nov 4, 2011
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I just got a gtx980 and needed a psu upgrade cause my power cooler psu was only.650watts I saw a cx750m corsair psu on maplin for £69.99 seemed very reasonable so I got it. Just fitted it last night as I turned on I heard a click, then a smell of burning so I powered off. I checked my cables was ok, and I thought maybe it's just new smell so powered on again. Pc lit up but would not power on. I could not believe my luck. So I put my old psu back on. Tried to boot and my pc wouldn't boot into windows. Weird, so I looked at cables again all ok. Tried again all of a sudden smoke starts poring from my £300 mpower max motherboard so I shut it down. I found not only has the corsair psu cx750m damaged my motherboard it's killed 2 2terrabite hard drives are now dead there new from wester digital black edition also a 1 terrabite hard drive dead. My board won't notice them now. But will notice other hd's. I try. Also notices my DVDs rom but I can't run the drive to instal windows so am guessing the board is toast. Now wAiting for maplin to open so I can tell them what there cx750m corsiar psu has done to my pc . Not happy at all. Hope my i7 is ok and my memory and my gtx980 :( can't believe it. And you say they know there has been issues yet there still selling them. They better do something about my dead PC cost me a lot of money so angry right now I suggest nobody buys these corsiar psu I thought I'd go with this psu cause suppose to be a quality product I think not.
 
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MrGoATi

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Sep 9, 2016
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the old psu was probably what 99.9% killed your motherboard,changing wires,unsafely moving parts and turning on different kind of power suply was probably what killed it, more of other parts would probably be ok if you did not try to turn pc on again 2 times when you know some part or wire made burn smells, in that case just go to other people,electric or someone who know about pc's(tom's hardware forums)
 
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Justiceinacan

Justiceinacan

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Jul 19, 2016
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I'd imagine it's possible but there's more of a chance that a motherboard could get damaged from it (more things connected / drawing power, at least that's an educated guess)

But it could also be the certain modular power port in question that could do that. Moral of the story at least ; buy NEW power supplies, preferably of the most RECENT generation, and is high quality unless you're replacing one for a pretty old PC...
 
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MrGoATi

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Sep 9, 2016
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i know this is 2 year old but for those who wander here, DON'T BUY USED POWER SUPLIES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! even if it is 999$ top branch, you might want to get used psu only if it is from a person you trust 99% and if it less than 1 year old(but i still would not recommend). psu is the part that does most degrading and it also is the only part that is likely to kill your gpu,motherboard, and possibly other parts

and for the guy that talked about bad product, that is not the problem of product quality even a top quality power supply will degrade, it will not start killing your computer on year 1 but it was not the case here it was used it might as well have been used 5+ years which is never recommended for power supplies.
 
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