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Burning PSU?

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Hi guys, i've had a disasterous christmas, i got up and turned my pc on and left it running for a while doing nothing. Then either turned it off or locked it while i went downstairs, i came back to finding a plug ontop of the power cord and the power cord was slightly hanging out (like it'd been tugged out a tiny bit by something) also there was the electronic burning smell coming from the pc. So i pushed the power cord in, then tried to turn it on, but it wouldn't boot at all!

I've read a few posts wondering what caused this, whether it was the loose power cable or what? I'm assuming the burning smell is from the PSU which is now dead? I'm wondering how common it is that other parts of my pc will have died too?

Thanks a lot guys!

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Power supply Master

thats a pretty good psu, so your other stuff should be fine.

i cant see how a loose cable could cause a failure. i guess its possbiel for the bad connection to have created extra heat and resistance or even instabiltiy of the input but the psu should be able to handle that - i think the psu just reached its time to go to psu heaven and the loose cable just happened to be occurring at the same time. of course, if you want to fix it, i have a link in my signature for that :) 
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Hey man, that's the best news i've had all day! Is it 100% safe to put my friends power supply straight into my pc, he's got an expensive one and i really wouldn't want to risk it breaking on me... I thought they were quite hardy things, plus there's no chance of shorting it, but is there any chance my pc could mess his up at all?

Thanks again man, i'll give your forums a read, although i'm getting the feeling that i will be out of my depth haha! Big help though, thanks a load!

Yeah i thought so, i've got everything crossed that it's just my psu... Might actually cry if my mobo/cpu is damaged hahaha! He's not going to come over till later, tension is getting to me!

Hahaha yeah i did actually, needed a name for the forums, usually put vex so thought i'd put that up for a laugh :D 

Anyways, thanks again mate, it's nice to know there's people like you around! Everybody thumbs up for him and check out his sig!

Agreed.

It was just for a quick and dirty check. The appliance of science or even still a voltmeter check of all the outputs would be a better option.

Better to just run a mile from that PSU!

Power supply Master

iam2thecrowe said:
that test is not 100% accurate. The psu fan can spin but voltage rails can be out of spec or other rails may not be working at all.

Very true. I recently worked on a friends computer. I unplugged the power cables and plugged them into my PSU tester - all voltages present and in tolerance and the PowerGood signal came up within specs. But the PSU could not support the load of the computer.

The paperclip trick, PSU tester, or DMM can tell you if an unloaded PSU is bad, but they cannot tell you if it is good.
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