Have you ever heard of a PSU killing motherboards?

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Gh0st

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 3, 2001
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My little cousin's computer died a few weeks ago. You'd go to hit the power button and nothing would happen. I figured out the motherboard blew. I replaced the motherboard for him and the PC was good for two weeks.

I just got a call from my uncle saying its doing the same thing it was doing before, you push the button and nothing happens.

The only things that haven't been changed are the PSU, the drives and the case. I'm guessing its the PSU blowing the motherboard out but I've never heard of them doing this before, aren't there fuses to prevent this from happening?

I guess I get to replace the motherboard and power supply this time?

Its an older E-Machine BTW
 
Is this an E-Machines computer by chance?

E-Machines had some models where they were using very cheap PSUs that would blow up and often take the mobo with it. It happened on my sister in law's E-Machines PC.

Replace the PSU (use a quality unit) and you may find the mobo is ok.
 
Better yet get rid of the whole thing and build something that isn't a POS.
 
Spartacus said:
Is this an E-Machines computer by chance?

E-Machines had some models where they were using very cheap PSUs that would blow up and often take the mobo with it. It happened on my sister in law's E-Machines PC.

Replace the PSU (use a quality unit) and you may find the mobo is ok.
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Do you happen to know which models, or about what time they were using them? This one is from 2003ish
 
Yes.

In fact the power supply is the only component that can kill every other component in a system if it fails. Granted a PSU failure shouldn't kill anything but I've seen nearly every component get killed when a cheap PSU blew up.
 
Azureth said:
Better yet get rid of the whole thing and build something that isn't a POS.
Click to expand...

I'm sure my little cousin would love that but the price difference is too great, $90 for motherboard and PSU vs $500+ for a new machine
 
Dan_D said:
Yes.

In fact the power supply is the only component that can kill every other component in a system if it fails. Granted a PSU failure shouldn't kill anything but I've seen nearly every component get killed when a cheap PSU blew up.
Click to expand...

Thats the other weird thing, the processor and ram were fine.

I couldn't test anything else because it was all built on stuff
 
Gh0st said:
Thats the other weird thing, the processor and ram were fine.

I couldn't test anything else because it was all built on stuff
Click to expand...

That's not that strange at all really. Just because a surge of energy hits the motherboard doesn't mean that it will kill the motherboard processor or add-in boards. I actually had an Antec Neo HE 550 blow up on me a couple weeks ago. It fried itself and both my Raptor 74GB drives all at once. No other components were effected.
 
Gh0st said:
Have you ever heard of a PSU killing motherboards?
Click to expand...

Quite often. Its typically when a cheap, poor-quality PSU is used (or cheap components inside an expensive PSU, lol). Its also VERY common amongst e-machine computers. Oh look... the system you're talking about is an e-machine! there's your answer. ;)
 
The way it happened on my sister in law's PC was I went over to look at the dead machine, replaced the PSU with one I had in my trunk (I work on PCs for a living) and the box powered up then, but was still dead. It powered up with the new PSU but no POST.

So I took it back to the shop, opened up the original PSU and saw very smoked parts inside. Figured at that point the mobo was DOA. I found a compatible replacement mobo on E-bay, got that in and everything powered up ok. From my Googling around looking for info on the mobo, that's when I found out about the E-Machines having the hand grenade PSUs that would take out the mobo too. I don't remember the specific models involved. I imagine all that info is still out there to be Googled.

The weird part is it took out the keyboard too. Got the machine up and running and found that the original keyboard was dead. :rolleyes: :D

If I wasn't donating the labor, I would have told her the machine was "totaled". It was the same situation as yours though, that a new PC was not an option.

So the parts count was:

PSU
mobo from E-bay
NIC card from parts box since replacement mobo didn't have one on-board
keyboard replaced with a spare from her older HP PC

And get this......

When the machine wouldn't power up she did that thing that girls do when machines don't work..... push the on button harder. She caved in the plastic button. :rolleyes:

I was aware of that problem from the start and was just shorting out the leads to power on the machine until I fixed everything else.

So to fix that, I drilled a hole in the faceplate and installed a switch from Radio Shack. I spent the time and effort to make it look nice, and it looks like it could have been that way from the factory.

So all told, it was $99 in parts and way too much time to fix that old box. I was happy to do it for family though.

Good luck on yours. :)
 
ok well I guess I'll be ordering a new power supply and new motherboard

thanks for all the help
 
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