I’m writing this post from my wife’s laptop, as my PC just died! 
All I did was shut it down, which it appeared to do normally, just at the last moment, there was an almighty bang and a smell of burned electrical components!
At this stage, I suspect the power supply, but I’m concerned that either the motherboard may have been a factor, or the heat – my CPU alarm has been going off for high temperature over the last few days…
So my dilemma is this:
- Since the PSU is almost certainly dead, should I just swap it out, or should I look for a new case with better cooling? [Please give me your recommendations on good cases with PSU's, if you have any!]
- Since I already have misgivings about the motherboard, should I swap that out too, and go back to my preferred brand – Intel – choosing one with internal temperature monitoring?
- What if the bang has damaged something else?????
I’d appreciate as much feedback as I can get on this as I need this up and running with some urgency, and don’t want to be constantly having to rebuild my PC….
Many thanks! 
No related posts.
First thing, open up the tower and take a look.
Things that can go ‘bang’ are most likely capacitors.
New components don’t need really big capacitors any more though.
How about take pictures of the innards and post to your blog John?
I bet we can sort it out better with visual aids.
Computers (or any electrical/electronic components) don’t like too much heat.
Are you blocking the vents on the tower?
Maybe take pictures of your set-up, the process of opening and the insides as you take things apart.
No way of knowing what happened until you look – sometimes you STILL can’t figure it out and you must start testing things with meters, etc.
Keep us posted.
I had a lab teacher who would tell us ‘Well, you let the smoke out, that’s what’s wrong’
Funny guy. I really learned a LOT from Mr. Rosemark (a.k.a. Rosie).
Hope that helps,
Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com
Hi Pam,
Nice to see you’re still following my blog!
The first thing I did was to take the cover off (since I built the system myself – I was familiar with what I was looking at). There was nothing visually amiss, so I decided to test the power supply. After stripping out the CPU heatsink and fan (no mean feat given the monster heatsink I’m using!) I finally got to the power connector, only to find that my multimeter had a flat battery……..and it wasn’t a standard size!
So, one trip across town and a new battery later confirmed that the PSU was indeed dead. Given my concerns over airflow and the “budget” motherboard, I decided to bite the bullet and ordered a new “high airflow” case (with some SERIOUS fans!) and a new Intel motherboard. I should have these by Tuesday, so will annoy my wife to use her laptop till then!
Many thanks for you suggestions – I particularly liked the idea of posting photos here. If only I’d ever thought to install a backup of the photo editing software on this laptop too….!
Best wishes,
-John.
As a friend computer teacher would have put it, “Do any thing on your PC as long as you don’t make it smoke.”
If I were in your position, I would get my data from that PC and swap the whole thing with as much as I can get. At least in my locality, it seems cheaper just to get a new PC instead of trying to resurrect an old one, esp. if it goes with a bang.
Looking forward to hearing about the ‘rebirth’ of your computer.
Tally Ho!
Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com