Saturday, September 19, 2009

New Motherboard, old case, dead power supply

Purchased a new motherboard, MSI G31M3-F V2 775 mATX. If you know your stuff you see I shop the bargains. If you're a gamer, I hear the snickering and don't care.
Now, down to business. I have 3 computers I use most of the time and I think some of my problems could be heat related. So I decided to put the new motherboard into the best case I have. Since this case was in operation, it was time to clean it out (all computers accumulate dust). So I broke it down(took everything out) and, after going outside, cleaned it with compressed air. Next, I took the best power supply of the 3 computers and did the same. Well, I killed my power supply! How? I had just read something about stopping the fan with a pencil or something before blasting it with compressed air for safety reasons. I didn't follow this advice(having done this maybe a hundred times) and after I was done, it was dead. The problem is that any motor is also a generator and when I blasted it with the air, it spun so fast it created an electric current and blew something out. It's a good thing I had a spare on the shelf.






On the left, the dead PSU(power supply unit). Note the two fans. It would have taken a super human effort to have stopped two fans at once. Shortly after this picture was taken, we burned the remains and tossed them into Lake Erie without a second thought, until we saw the flashing lights in the mirror.

No comments:

Post a Comment