PSU blow up.

[hannodewind]

Smelled funny alright. A sweet, burny smell.

That is what you call 'Expensive Smelling Smoke'.

Luckily most PSUs have protection against overvoltage on the output, so your other components should be fine (the protection usually does not fail first). Mostly caps that pop.

 

[Pada]

hannodewind: I think most PSU's don't have over-voltage/over-current protection on the output, because the majority of the desktop PSU's are dirt cheap.

The majority of the 80-plus certified PSU's do have that protection though.

 

[hannodewind]

As I understand PSU's that are designed to ATX specification must have output protection if you read section 3.4 in

http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/ATX12V_PSDG_2_2_public_br2.pdf

Also, the components needed for a simple 'crowbar' protection circuit are dirt cheap, no need not to include it in even the cheapest PSU.

 

[Pada]

Many say that they are ATX 2.2 PSU's, but they don't really conform to the specifications -especially when comes to over-power/current/voltage protection and noise ripples.

 

[AstroTurf]

Yeah. I'm a bit of a cheapskate. Well, I live and learn.

Never happened to me (built and maintained over a thousand pc's in the last 10 years) so relax.