Simviation Forums

Well y'all, it happened.

I had my case open looking for the best way to fit a DVD-ROM in, and the screen went blank and a bit later (seconds) I saw a wisp of white smoke.  My first reaction was turn it all off, and after that, I sat there and stared at my $1000 piece of plastic and copper, and just decided to go to sleep.  I couldn't ask sooner, because my school has Simviation blocked on a firewall, and my internet PC required XP to be activated, which I had trouble doing.  But...

What could it have been?  I'm afraid to turn it back on again.  It was still booting up and then everything went downhill.

Hardware:
Athlon 64 3000
Asus K8V Deluxe
NVidia Ti4200
Two 512 sticks of Corsair RAM
Hitachi 250GB
DVD+/-RW

What component did the smoke come from?

Poor thing,

What exactly were you doing, touching, breathing on...

There has been only one instance I know of where having the case open and the computer on, burned up a video card.  By having the case open there was no real "air flow" Sure the fan on the Vidcard was working, but it was still sucking warm, uncirculated air from the case. In this case it had been on a while.

Didn't make it out of the POST or just hadn't fully loaded Windows yet?

Interesting, my heart goes out to you.

All i can recommend is to plug it back in again, then try to turn it on.  If it does not turn on it is either the PSU, mobo, RAM or CPU that has gone.  It sounds to me like the PSU has gone, as they are known to smoke a bit when they give in.  

If it does not turn on when you try it, try getting hold of another PSU from somewhere and put that in, i would make sure it is a good quality 350W or a reasonable quality 500W, so that you don't blow it.

If it does turn on but no picture, then it is obviously your GFX card.

The smoke came from around the CPU/GFX (By the time I noticed things had gone awry, the smoke was high enough so that it could have come from either one.)

It was still in the POST and XP had not even been called up yet.

Ok then there is only one way to find out which it is, plug it in turn it on.  It will not work at all if the CPU is broke, it will turn on and no picture will appear and loads of beeps will occur if it is the GFX card.

Ok Scorpion, this is what you need to do. Take a deep breath. Go down to the icecream store and get a big scoop. Just as good as prozac with none of the suicidal side effects.
Then take your machine down to a professional and have them look at it. Just hope it's nothing you've done and that it's still under warrantee.

If it does turn on but no picture, then it is obviously your GFX card.

Not neccessarily...I had a problem just last week where when I turned it on I didn't get anything on my screen and my mobo didn't beep or anything...led me to believe cpu, memory, or video card...but all tested good in a different system...so I started swapping parts and found that my power supply wasn't workign quite right...after rigging up a temp setup to test the power supply I found that the voltages weren't what they should be...replaced p/s with a new one and am up and running with no problem... I'm still not sure why I didn't see any smoke pouring from the p/s...

Whisp of white smoke? I'd guess its the CPU.

I killed a 3.2ghz p4 a while ago, 3 seconds running with a duff fan!  ::)  :'(

Iroquis, excellent presciption!  Vanilla Blue Bell, Hersheys Chocolate and M&Ms!  Coupled with sleep, all problems fade away...

Drats.  My system worked before, and I've never heard of RAM failing, so scratch one possibility.  The GFX worked fine on the Dell PC, and I turned it on today, and all the mechanical things (fans, lights, etc.) worked, so the motherboard is distributing power.  It must be the CPU.

Is AMD a customer friendly company?  Would a CPU failure like this even be covered under warranty?  Bah!  I like my money!

If it was not o/c'ed and is still under warranty you should be able to put a claim in for a replacement, they will ask you to send the cpu in and they will inspect it for o/c'ing etc...  Then if they are satisfied they will send you a replacement.

Have you actually tried another power supply?

I seriously thought that my cpu/motherboard or everything was toast this past week...I was too getting power at the fans, and the voltages all added up where they were supposed to...

Just a thought, but if I were you I would try the $40 p/s replacement before waiting a month for amd to set you up with another one...

and if the p/s help any you should be able to take it back to the store right? most places do have return polices...

Several things:
[list][*]I'm sure something's gone horribly wrong, last I checked, computer weren't supposed to smoke.

Its not exactly the morally right thing to do, but, I'd order a replacement cpu, when it arrives, mail your dead one back, if your lucky, you'll get either a refund or a new cpu. I've been there, done it and got away with it!  ;)  ;D

Before you re-fit it though, find out exactly what caused your cpu faliure to start with!

was the cpu cooler removed somewhere in the past? if so, it ABSOLUTELY needs re-applying thermal grease or it will certainly die