PC flashed and burned :(

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Vitrolic

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Hi!

Yesterday I was playing cod and my PC lit up with a bright white flash and then restarted. What promptly followed was a burning smell. I quickly unplugged it and tried to diagnose the problem, but alas I could not find the source of the burning smell. I think the problem was probably heat related as it was stinking hot/humid in durbz yesterday.

Now when I try start up the PC it reboots every time it starts showing the windows loading bar. I tried using different hard drives / operating systems but the PC reboots every time as windows starts loading. Unplugging my graphics card has also not solved the problem. Occasionally I can boot into windows but my PC usually restarts after about 30 minutes and if I open a game it reboots immediately.

My specs are as follows:

AMD Phenom 965
4GB DDR2-800 RAM
Samsung spinpoint SATA HD
ATI 4890
Cheapy MSI motherboard
Corsair TX650W

All the components on the PC are under a year old, so I'm greatly hoping that all I've done is cooked my motherboard or something. Would greatly appreciate any advice/help, especially if I can try figure out which component it is. Really not keen to send my PC to a techie for 2 weeks :/

Thanks
 
Hmm I'd suspect mobo or PSU.
But leaning toward mobo..
I'm surprised it starts up at all!!?

Ok so were you/do you overclock?
Anyways have a good look at the mobo, you wanna look for bulging capacitors or chips/cracks in any of the chips. Also just make sure that all power connections are securely in place and clipped in securely, SECURELY :)
If your case has a speaker connected to the mobo, try removing all (incl RAM, GPU HDD etc) except the cpu and power from the mobo, then see if you get any beeps? and slowly start adding components back to the mobo
 
Last edited:
nakedpeanut said:
Hmm I'd suspect mobo or PSU.
But leaning toward mobo..
I'm surprised it starts up at all!!?

Ok so were you/do you overclock?
Anyways have a good look at the mobo, you wanna look for bulging capacitors or chips/cracks in any of the chips. Also just make sure that all power connections are securely in place and clipped in securely.
Click to expand...

Ye I'm also surprised it starts up :0

Never overlocked it.

I have taken a good look at the mobo but I can't see anything obviously wrong :/ I've taken everything out the case and re-assembled twice already so I'm 100% sure its not a loose power connection. My bet is the motherboard because its a R400 MSI job while the PSU is a Corsair TX650W, think it's 100x more likely that the motherboard has failed :P Problem is I don't have an AMD board spare to test and it seems everyone I know uses intel.
 
lol true true, but maybe you just got that defective PSU :p There has to be at least one lol..

But ya rule of thumb for me is never buy a mobo for less than R1000
 
hm if I tested the PSU could I be sure it is the motherboard?

Testing the PSU on a friend's PC will be easy and then if it's fine, it's most likely the Motherboard? I can't rule out the chip though either? :/
 
Try test as much as you can on your friends rig.. PSU, GPU, RAM, CPU..
Did you buy the CPU, mobo, ram from the same place? IF so and you can't determine whats faulty, I'd just take them back...
 
Well with heat it could be anything.

You can blame the mobo because it was cheap but just because you have an expensive psu does not mean it cannot break. Anything no matter the cost can and will fail at some point.
 
Use your nose and have a good sniff at the components.If you initially smelled that burn you, could easily find that smell on your rig.Also check fot any bulging,burst or capacitors with a liquid on the PSU,mobo or GPU.
 
Vitrolic said:
hm if I tested the PSU could I be sure it is the motherboard?

Testing the PSU on a friend's PC will be easy and then if it's fine, it's most likely the Motherboard? I can't rule out the chip though either? :/
Click to expand...

+1 for PSU. Test your psu in another pc and test your pc with another psu, if possible...
 
Doubt it is the PSU, maybe Mobo or CPU. I didn't attach my fan to my CPU properly once and it did the same thing. As soon as it heated up just a little it restarted...
 
It actually sounds like the PSU, I would test that first. If there is something wrong with the MB then it will often beep when you boot up, the next thing would be to check the RAM. Take one stick of RAM out at a time and see if its boots up, if could be that the one RAM module popped and then the other is fine.

Have you tried things like opening the case, taking off the side panel and pumping air in with a big fan ?
 
Ditto on the PSU. CPUs don't half break. They tend to either work or not - the wonders of digital electronics. Anyway, the flash: where was it?
If I were to guess and due to your descriptions, I'd say you still have a cooling issue. It's quite possible that the fan in your PSU isn't functioning properly and when it goes under load, it heats up and cuts out.
 
Suggestion:

Try you mates PSU in your rig, rather than yours in his. If it is the PSU, you don't want to fry his mobo too...
 
JoeSlaughter said:
Doubt it is the PSU, maybe Mobo or CPU. I didn't attach my fan to my CPU properly once and it did the same thing. As soon as it heated up just a little it restarted...
Click to expand...

Even if it isn't the PSU, it's the easiest to test. Like he said, he doesn't know anyone with a AMD mobo, but every pc does have a PSU. ;)
 
Thanks for the help guys -

I didn't see exactly where the flash came from, it was kind of in the middle of the case. I'm going to test it with my friend's pc later today. I checked everything SUPER carefully and even smelled every single component lol

I have already tested alternate RAM sticks / Graphic card by removing.

Another thing I've realised is that if I runs for about 40 minutes and then restarts, it will continue restarting at load screen again and again - unless I switch it off and leave it for a while - this makes me think that it must be heat related. I took off the crap CPU cooler I had on and have replaced it with a Thermaltake Golden Orb. I made 100% sure there was enough thermal paste on the cpu and that the cooler has been correctly installed. I also carefully monitored my CPU temperature last time I managed to login and it didn't go over 43 degrees untill it restarted and this is fine for an AMD phenom.

As someone said CPU's tend to either fail completely or not at all, so I'm pretty sure that it's not the CPU - either motherboard or PSU now.

If I still can't diagnose does anyone know of a speedy/reliable PC techie in Durban? I really can't afford to wait 2 weeks to get my PC back!
 
Vitrolic said:
Hi!

Yesterday I was playing cod and my PC lit up with a bright white flash and then restarted. What promptly followed was a burning smell. I quickly unplugged it and tried to diagnose the problem, but alas I could not find the source of the burning smell. I think the problem was probably heat related as it was stinking hot/humid in durbz yesterday.

Now when I try start up the PC it reboots every time it starts showing the windows loading bar. I tried using different hard drives / operating systems but the PC reboots every time as windows starts loading. Unplugging my graphics card has also not solved the problem. Occasionally I can boot into windows but my PC usually restarts after about 30 minutes and if I open a game it reboots immediately.


My specs are as follows:

AMD Phenom 965
4GB DDR2-800 RAM
Samsung spinpoint SATA HD
ATI 4890
Cheapy MSI motherboard
Corsair TX650W

All the components on the PC are under a year old, so I'm greatly hoping that all I've done is cooked my motherboard or something. Would greatly appreciate any advice/help, especially if I can try figure out which component it is. Really not keen to send my PC to a techie for 2 weeks :/

Thanks
Click to expand...

Just check your capacitors. If it looks like it's popped up then It might be faulty also looks like a cpu overheating problem
 
Just did the BIOS test, the PC was fine. I monitored temperatures the whole time and the CPU temp and SYS temp never went above 45 and 30 respectively.

However, there was definitely a faint burning smell coming from the PC. Couldn't smell exactly where it was coming from and I can't see any smoke, but it's definitely there. I'm gonna try test with another PSU asap now, I also don't want to damage any of my existing components if it's a faulty PSU!
 
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