What shut down my PC and killed my hard drive while I was playing a game?

Hi,

I was playing Bad Company 2 today when I thought I smelled something burning. My room mate had just taken something out of the oven so I figured that was the source of the smell. After a few minutes my PC shut down and I immediately became worried. I got down under the desk and powered off the PSU. I opened up the case and let the CPU cool down before trying to power it back on. After turning on the PSU again, the PC would not start up. There were no lights on the mobo and the fans did not spin or anything. I replaced the PSU, but didn't plug in the hard drive or case fans, and it booted up, but only after a few tries. OK, so I thought, the problem is the PSU.

So I put the rig back together and tried to power it on, but no joy. So I figured the 400W icute power supply was not enough to power the GPU, hard drive and fans, etc. So I took out the GPU (Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5770) and tried again, to no avail. The only thing left to do was unplug the hard drive, and sure enough, with the hard drive out, it booted. I've got a very slow, 200 GB drive in now.

I'm going to send the drive to Seagate, but is it safe to plug the old PSU back in? It's an Orion YH-480W. Could it be what killed the drive? Second, what are the chances the iCute 400W PSU will be able to power my card that recommends 450W?

Moreover, after reconnecting the old HDD, I was able to boot with it in, but I did not hear the motor start, and the system did not detect the drive.

Any insight appreciated. Thanks.

dont buy cheap power supplies, and dont use that icute piece of junk either. this is what happens when you dont use quality components. id bet if you took that orions PSU cover off, youd find burn marks on the PCB. thats what cheap units do. they burn, and kill hardware in the process. consider yourself lucky that it only took the HD with it.

give us your system specs and we'll find a nice unit for you that wont burn your house down.

Thanks for the replies. Here are my specs:

Phenom II X4 (Phenom II X3 with 4th core unlocked)
Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5770
2GB DDR 800 (1 stick)
Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H Mobo

No overclocking on any of it. I was waiting to get a new heatsink and PSU before doing any overclocking.

I'm still not sure whether it was the PSU, or just the HDD frying on it's own. Does anyone know of a way to test the PSU without plugging it into the motherboard?

I do find the Newegg comments to be relavent BUT MUST add common sense and take with a grain of salt.

I'm Not going to buy a PSU that has a 25% or greater i/2 egg out of => than 100 comments.

Normally will disregare if under 20 -> 50 comments.

Will read comments to see if there is a common problem, or postings are not valid.
Example: Gigabyte H55M- UD2H. 40% out of 35 = 1/2 eggs. But looking at the reviews almost all bought as a Kit (w/i5-750). Most expected that they could attach the monitor to the provided HDMI/DVI connector. Unlike the I3, the I5-750 does not have Intergrated Graphics.

NOTE: Do not normally even consider such a low end board. Was for an individual that (1) Email (2) Internet (3) Only games are ones that will play on integrated Graphics. Wanted Firewire and esata, I would have prefered the H57 / -USM3, But not in stock at microcenter

I word of advice, dont do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. You had people telling you you were lucky already, and you went ahead and continued using that PSU.

Technically, most PSUs are made to face down anyway. The bottom mounted cases are newer, but it doesn't matter. The fan on the PSU is intake, and it exhausts through the back. What most people ask is if a PSU should face up or down in a bottom mounted case.