It sparked and smoked! Oh dear...

[gearoi]

Hi there,

I was putting together a build for my brother-in-law from my old parts...

I put these components in:

Gigabyte 8IPE1000 Pro mobo
4x256 kingston value ram
P4 3.2 northwood
7600 GS gfx card - xfx
ROM
Into a cheapo case...
with a cheapo power supply (that had been working with the above set up for about a year in an old case)

So I turn it on... NOTHING.
I look in the case - only a yellow LED in the corner of the motherboard is lit.
I read stuff online - it says to reset the CMOS and maybe that'll help.
I take out the battery for 2 mins, then replace it.
I turn it on again.
SMOKE!!! FLAME!!! I really can't believe it - the damn thing sparked on me...

I hadn't O/C'd or anything.

Now - none of these items are still in warranty, so what do you think I should do? Do I change the mobo, or assume that it has fried everything else too (CPU, GFX, memory)???

Or do I just redo from start...

I do not know how or why it did this either - this was the third system I've put together and the others have really not done much smoking...

I'd be mortified if this was a brand new setup, but I'm not so worried as this was an OLD PARTS system...

Your wise words much appreciated!

Gear

 

[shadowthor]

It was probably the crappy power supply that caused the spark, at least it was in an old computer. You could try another quality psu to see if it will boot (hoping that the psu didn't take down the mobo, ram and video with it). If not, you wiill have to build a new system.

 

[gearoi]

Even though the same power supply has worked for the same mobo, ram, cpu and gpu for a year beforehand?

Was more like the mobo caught fire rather than just a spark too. Maybe I didn't make that clear enough, apologies if so.

 

[shadowthor]

If the mobo caught on fire, then it is most likely you have to build a new system.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Did you put the battery back in upside-down? Taking out the battery isn't required if you have a clear cmos jumper.

 

[szwaba67]

i'd check the standoffs or nomad screws underneath the board. whatever caused the board to crash and burn won't tell us much about the other components anyway, you won't know which components are gone till you test them individually.

 

[techguy911]

Improper mounting i see it all the time i had a guy that bought mb, case,hd,dvd burner said he would have his tech friend install it.

I get a phone call saying they can get it to boot i said to bring it in, i open it up and low and behold he has mounted the motherboard without any stand offs to the flat metal backing plate lol.

Also had customers mount the mb to backplate with brass stand offs and had one to many and shorted out board , flamed out and burned.

 

[pbrigido]

I'm on board with szwaba76 and techguy911.

Look for a darkened, sort of charred area on the top and bottom of the motherboard. That may indicate a short and tell where/why it happened.

I had that happen to me once and everything was fine in the end....I got lucky though.