Computer won't start -- Burnout!?

[dogus1]

I was jamming along playing Jedi Knight II the other day and my computer crashed -- it was a heat issue, for sure, as I did not take my usual precaution of placing a box fan next to my open case! YES, I do this, because for some reason I cannot get my CPU to cool down -- I bought that Artic silver thermal bond, I bought a top of the line heatsink ... and still, during 3d games my rig gets HOT. Over 70 degrees celcius! The box fan really works, though! Really! However, yes, I forgot this time and my computer got hotten than I think it had ever gotten before -- when I touched the box to test for heat -- My GOD! I could have cooked an egg on it! I let it be for a while, forgot about it, and then today, two days later -- the computer won't turn on at all! I have not used it since that initial failure. I am wondering if something catastropic happened!

However, even if I fried the CPU, wouldn't my power supply still light the little LED on my motherboard -- and wouldn't I stil powerup into Bios or at least into an error message? I am getting no power -- and normally when I turn my power supply off and on, I hear a little revving sound ...but no longer! -- Is it possible that I have somehow blown out my power supply? It too also always seems to be excessivly hot, and I don't know if thats because of some sort of error, or if it is supposed to do that, or if it is because of its close proximity to my hot CPU???

Are there different levels of quality in power supplies? And how much wattage does one need -- this one is 400 watts.

I have
AMD Athlon 2100+
512 MB ddr ram
Geforce 4 4200 128 mb
windows xp
biostar m7vik via Kt400

 

[Flinx]

1) Yes it is possible you have blown your power supply.
2) Yes it is possible that it has taken other components of your system with it.

I'd try to find the reason for your heat build up. Your components won't last long if you don't.

First things first. You need to find out what components are still good. Easiest way is to swap components with a working system. (Of course don't leave them running indefinitely, check for things heating up too much (suspiciously) immediately).



The loving are the daring!

 

[MaximumGoat]

yeah power supplies vary in quality, but frankly 400w should easily be enough, it could be the power upply thats gone though, happened to me once.

I think something more fundamental is wrong though, it should not be heating up so much, but like the other guy said, swap the components in a working system until you find the source of failure

 

[jmecor]

do smoke come out from the psu?

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The Ultimate Video Processor:
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[pIII_Man]

well it sounds like your powersupply was under alot of load if it is getting excessivly hot...

What have you done to try to combat your heat problems...

Could it be that your cpu got so hot that it died...causing an internal short in the processor which ended up killing the powersupply? If your processor was hitting 70c with room fan blowing into the case...i can only immagine what temps it would hit with a normal case fan!

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz...