Is it possible my daughter fried my pc?
At the beginning of the week my daughter was playing around in the room and accidentally threw a pillow in between my PC’s power supply (where the fan is) and the wall so it got wedge in between. I did not notice until it was too late and suddenly the computer went dead and would not turn on after that. I assumed she over heated the PS until and I went and bout a replacement 700 watt PSU today and installed it correctly and went to turn it on and nothing. I got a brief flash of light when I pushed the power button (the light was from the system fans) and then nothing else. Is it possible that when my PSU over heated it sent electricity to my motherboard and all my other components? Is it time to start replacing all my parts (I just bought a 350 dollar video card and put it in there :() Any second opinions out there?
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That seems to be the likely thing.. If you’re lucky its just one piece of hardware that has been fried and will need replacing. Take it to a computer store and have them pop it open and start checking the parts.
Make some phone calls. Find a shop that will do diagnostics. Some will do it for free, if you tell them you will buy the dead component from them when they find it. Could be the CPU. Could be the mobo. Less likely, but could be the very ‘spensive video card. Probably not the RAM. Pull the mobo. Leave RAM and CPU in place. Take the video card along. It will take the guy with “parts” and a test bench about 15 minutes to find the dead piece. Buy a good Antec or Cooler Master case with lots of air flow, so this doesn’t happen again. Put it back together and enjoy your machine.
Before you do anything expensive, look at the back of the power supply unit (where the power switch and plugs are) and see if you have a red switch back there. If you do have one, it should say “110” on the switch. If it says “220” then switch it into the other position.
On rare occasions I’ve gotten power supplies that were switched to 220V, for whatever reason. I never noticed until I hit the power switch and got the same power light blip with minor fan movement.
Every time I’ve done that my components survived (somehow).
By switching to 220 input, the output would be half of the desired voltage. Usually electronics are not damaged by voltage that is too low.
well I removed the video card as well as the sound and just had the RAM and cpu and mobo hooked up, and still when I switch it on, I just get a flash of light from the l.e.d fans and then noting. I going to say it’s the motherboard because wouldn’t I see the indicator light on the motherboard if it was the CPU? I did check the 220 switch and it was set correctly. I just hope it didn’t affect the vid card, I don’t care about anything else really, its just an excuse for me to upgrade the mobo, CPU and RAM.
The magic smoke has been released.
A fried CPU will not present a system from powering up at least to the extent of spinning some fans. I’d say it was the mobo.
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