Tweaking goofup...learn from my mistake

[Gordon Moore]

Well, when cutting the stock fan exhaust plate out of the powersupply (to improve airflow), make sure the power supply is unplugged and FULLY discharged before doing so (Like wait an hour or so). The jarring action of the tin snips must have caused 2 caps (or something inside) to touch. The PS was turned on but I forgot to unplug the power cord which, I assume, still supplies trickle power . That poof of smoke was my new 300W powersupply. Now, forever a reminder of what not to do. OOPS. Oh well, Now I can get that ENERMAX I've been eyeing. :P




"A RONSTER!"

[Andrew Pratt]

you're lucky neither you nor your motherboard got hurt in that accident...as far I as know there's a lot of power in those caps 8O

So what's the specs on your machine?

[Gordon Moore]

Well no fear of getting zapped unless something really jarred loose (which would indicate the power supply was really defective) and touched the side of the PS case. At that point you hope that you're not the path to ground and that with the supply cord any zap is going to go through there instead. Also, I guess i would have been testing the insulation of the rubber grips on the tin snips.

The whole experiment wasn't so much an exercise in overclocking (As my system is fairly modest...it's only a Duron 800 with a geforce 2 GTS (I did get the card....and love it!). It's more to do with quieting things down. One way of helping that is eliminate the air block put up by the stock grill on the deer powersupply. The other is to quiet down the case. I 've played with some techniques and had some pretty decent results by lining the case with rubberized undercoating and cork board (not a big fan of carpet as the potential to build up static charge is too great).

And yes, I was lucky I only fried the power supply (at least I think that's all I did) I only did a quick test with a spare power supply I had lying around and everything seems to be firing up okay). So I think that the Enermax 350W variable fan control with intake and exhaust fans will be my next choice




"A RONSTER!"

[SiliGoose]

Yikes! That could have been much worse.

I have the Enermax Whisper 431w and it's a nice PSU. Great to have dual fans on the PSU. It's also very quiet behind my 5 case fans

If overclocking is in your future you might want to consider another brand, however. The 5v rail is a bit low on Enermax PSUs. It hasn't really kept me back but it's unfortuante nonetheless.




-Sili

[Bing Fung]

Whoa, 8O that was close, good to hear you were not hurt.




Bing

[Gordon Moore]

Well the plot thickened and then simmered.
I took a look inside my old power supply to see what died (that and I was going to salvage the sleeve fan because it was practically new and they come in handy from time to time) and everything look perfect. No scoring or burn marks anywhere. Seemed a little odd.
I borrowed a identical powersupply from my brother-in-law and plugged it into my system. Turned everything on and NUTHIN. Aw nuts (actually I said something a little stronger) I figured I fried the board. Though I noticed that some LEDS on the motherboard were lit so I new some power was getting through (DFI's board has indicators that let you know if AGP 4X is activated etc...). I systematically unplugged each device and lo an behold the floppy drive was the culprit. It went to floppy heaven. Somehow, when the power connector was plugged into the floppy, it prevented the system from powering up. A had a spare 3.5" lying around and sure enough that was the problem.

I plugged my old power supply back in and everything worked. Seems I got lucky (alhtough I don't entirely trust it so I may still go out and get a new PS...we'll see). Maybe what I thought was smoke was dust :?:
It's running like a top. It's a bit of a questionable coincidence that the floppy drive died around that time but I could care less cause everything seems to be fine.

Thanks for listening.




"A RONSTER!"