Hey everyone! Been out of the loop for a spell, but trouble brings my return.

I fried my PSU today (while playing Call of Duty!) and my question is this:

When they toast, and I mean the "POP" and the smell of burnt wiring, can this zap the other components (theoretically)?

I removed the PSU and the smell is definately coming from it, but I don't seem to smell anything around the MB or other components.

The graphics started to go crazy, disappeared, then came the "POP".

Thanks in advance for any help in this matter.

Geez man,

You are gonna give people nightmares with posts like this.

Sounds like a capacitor died on your powersupply. They can do that when they get older(new ones can too). It is possible to damage your other components when your psu fails. It could leak high voltages onto your computer parts and fry them. Here's a link with more information: Capacitor plague - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I wish you the best!

Thanks for the reply. For sure I'm gonna have nightmares about this tonite!
You are correct, I blew a capacitor in my PSU, I cracked it open and saw it.
I'm just hoping that it didn't send a power surge down the rail.

" The graphics started to go crazy, disappeared, then came the "POP".


May be irrelevant but, if the graphics looked like a tear from the middle of your screen (kinda like your pressing something sharp into the middle of an LCD monitor) then it may be due to your GFX card over heating when you PS went.

Not sure about other models but the 6800 has this tear effect at about 100 Oc so still some play room before it totals your card.

hope all your components are safe

It did seem to do what you described.

I have a GeForce 8600 GT XXX card.

Might be safe, hopefully!

Thanks again!

We'll do the hoping. You do the praying!

Let us know if any of your parts were damaged. I'm really curious.

After having to use my wife's laptop for all this time (which was a lifesaver, by the way!), I finally got my new power supply.
It's a PC Power & Cooling 750W Silencer (825W peak). Seems to be a pretty good PSU.
I was afraid that when my old PSU blew up that it may have zapped some of my hardware, but, thankfully everything was just fine.
Just wanted to say thanks for the help and advice!