power supply burned up twice

[ilusha2]

Ok, so I got that motherboard (i posted in an earlier message) for my Tualatin Celeron. I had problems booting up, but otherwise everything was fine. And suddenly it stopped turning on. I hooked the power supply to my old computer and it didn't boot up either, so I assumed it was the power supply. Well, I went and bought a PowerMax 500 SEL ATX Case with a 400 Watt PSU. I thought "This should be more than enough power". I hooked it up, everything worked, installed windows, everything works, great! Turn it off, put it in my room, plug it in, turn it on, but it won't turn on! So now 2 power supplies have burned up. Can anyone tell me what the **** is going on?!

[Budfred]

There are a couple of possibilities:

One is that the power supplies you were using just weren't very good. I got one with a case that was rated at about 400watts and died about the 3rd time I used it. Check this article for clues about what to look for in power supplies:

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/index.html

Another possibility is that you have a dirty power supply into your house. You can use an Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to smooth this out.

A third possibility is that you have a short in your system that is damaging the power supplies, but this seems less likely.

A fourth (and even less likely) possibility is that you have too much heat in the system with the new CPU and it is damaging the PS. It is more likely some other component would go first if that was the case however.

[ilusha2]

It's cool, I got it to work. I think what happened was, that I hooked up the power sw, power led, hdd led, etc. cables onto the motherboard, and kept pushing the buttons, but they didn't work, and then I took the cables out, and tried to turn it on via the back switch (it has a rear switch, like 286s had in addition to the front switch), and it didn't work. Once I hooked the cables up correctly (thanks to my motherboard manual), I was able to turn it on with the front switch.

[Budfred]

And a fifth possibility is that your cables are hooked up wrong.... Oh, that is it, why didn't I think of that....:D :D

Congratulations on figuring it out and on getting your hot new board to run....:cool:

[saphalline]

I'm personally glad you got it to work considering that I was the one who told you to get that new mobo! :eek: :D

[ilusha2]

Yea, it's a nice board. The sound is much better than the ESS Allegro on my old Compaq Presario 7594 mobo. I mean, it actually amplifies the sound, if only slightly. I had my speakers turned off, and I could actually hear something! I just bought a pair of JBL Pro Speakers on the flea market yesterday for $3, and what a difference in sound! I can actually hear things like running water and birds in GTA3, I didn't even know the sounds existed.

[saphalline]

Wow! And that's with just the onboard sound? Cool. :cool: I guess even cheap speakers and onboard sound these days are like audio bliss compared to several years ago. Nice to know cheap technology works! :p

[ilusha2]

Well, JBL Pro are not cheap speakers, are they? I thought they were medium quality speakers?

[saphalline]

Well, in terms of cost. Only $3 for speakers is, I think, pretty cheap. Yes, I'd say the quality of them is medium. I have a lot of older games that sound the same on bundled Compaq speakers as they do on a 4.1 set-up - they just don't require much audio fidelity! :rolleyes: