Does a Fried Power Supply Mean a Fried PC?

[Alexander]

Hi, after installing a hard drive my pc power wont come on. I decided that to play around with the power select button on the Power supply and changed it from 115 to 250. This time the power came on but I smell fire and saw smoke.

Note: The fire and smoke happened before I pressed the power button in front of the PC.

I hope it's just the power supply that's dammaged. Can anyone tell me if I should suspect that the damage went beyound the power supply? Do I have to invest in a whole new pc or should I just purchase a new power supply?

[mrrobotto]

What on earth possessed you to switch it to 250 in the first place? but really it shouldn't have went up in smoke. Sometimes when a power supply goes it takes other things with it. You could be lucky though but the only way you will know for sure is to replace the PSU and see what happens.

You might also visually check your mobo for any signs of damage(eg. melted or burnt parts.)

[Bovon]

Originally posted by mrrobotto
What on earth possessed you to switch it to 250 in the first place? but really it shouldn't have went up in smoke.

I agree.. by switching the psu to 250 input volts, should have reduced all output voltages by at least 1/2..but.. therein may be what started it all downhill. An ATX board requires the 5 volt power-good circuit be applied before the board can work. By switching to the 250 settings, the 5 volt power good circuit would not have been anywhere near the correct voltage, and the regulator on the psu output may have gone up in smoke trying to force the power good circuit to work at 5 volts.

Unless the psu had some 'wild' voltages take over when whatever shorted out...the motherboard/cpu may have survived. Only a new psu will tell the final story.