Hi there, my names Dan and November last year i purchased a gaming system; (Please stick with me as this is alot of history haha)

AMD 64 X2 6000 cpu
ASUS M2N-E SLi mobo
3Gb DDR2 kingston 800Mhz ram
Xpertvision 8600GTS 512mb gfx card
Some snazzy 650W modular psu
and a NZXT slick black case

But about an hour after recieving it and turning it on etc, i look around the back to install my 5.1 speaker system and i see the Famous red switch on the back of the PSU, and being the pure genious i am, i flip the switch and Boom goes the system

So i asked my mother (shes my pc nerd idol , im only 17) what was wrong and she said i blew it up, so we order'd me a new psu that was 650w, but not modular, and i blew that one up due to frustration and forgetting what voltage setting the switch needed to be on.

Then came the aggonising pain of realising how much of a twit i am, so i tell mother again and we both laugh at my stupidity (I'm not your average joe and im not your regular dipstick, im a computer hardware enthausiast) so we order a 750W psu winpower - and guess what? It didnt have the red switch on! yay!

So, just untill about a week ago i was using this system with the new 750 watt perfectly, upgraded the ram to 4GB Team Elite DDR2 800Mhz, added a Zalman 1000 cooler to the GPU and an Asus silentknight II to the CPU and finally put it all together in the mother of all E-ATX cases, the Xclio Twin Engine A380 Full tower case with 25Cm and 35Cm in-take fans.

One day i decided to give my wireing some TLC (Tender loving care), i purchase a psu modding kit (changing the standing molex connectors to fancy UV blue molex was all i had in mind with a bit of cable sleeving.) so i go about and change three of the molex connectors to the new ones.

Then after i tidy the wires up etc and get it all connected back-up again, i plug her in and power her on! i could hear a weird new noise coming from the pc, and i smelt burning plastic/rubber, i said to my self "Oh ****!!", i panic'd and ripped my psu power chord out like there was no-tomorrow, ripped out all the other wires and opend the side panel, surely enough a burst of thick smoke wafted into my unsuspecting face and enterd my nostrils.

I cryed in my hands for a good minute or two before i came to my senses and ventured into my pc to find out what went wrong, after a minute of looking at the wiring i noticed one of the molex's red wires coming from the GFX card was burnt all the way up to the psu. I sighed and removed the 6pin to two male molex plug and decided to show my mother and ask wtf went wrong.

She told me she had never seen or heard of anything like this, but we both came to the conclusion that my molex D.I.Y jobbie had screwed up the 6 pin connection which resulted in the gfx card wanting more and more power which overloaded the motherboard and burnt the wire.

After another conclusion that the gfx card and psu were toast, we purchased a 850Watt modular psu from ebay for £35 with post'n'packaging and a beautiful XFX GeForce 8800GT 512mb Alpha Dog edition xxx, only to find that the system would turn on, but wouldn't POST or display anything visually (no signal input). after two days of gruuling google searches, i had come to the conclussion that my motherboard infact had been turned to toast after this little epidemic.

Both my mother and i were growing frustrated at this point, i for not being able to play my newly purchased GRID game, and her for having to spend so much on parts when she could just buy a whole system but for lower the cost, also for not having a high-end system that we could troubleshoot parts with etc, and the fact that pc world would charge us like £100 for a 10 minute part test and our local computer shop (Astro Pc - wtf kind of name is that?) didnt even have a single Mobo with a PCI-E x16 slot.

Oh yeh i forgot to mention, this £35 psu commited suicide when i plugged it in and power'd the system on (Dont ask me how but i turned the system on and everything came on for half a second and boom, it died), so i used my mothers backup 650watt psu.

So i spent a good 20 minutes looking at atx mobo's with 1 pci-e x16 slot and two pci slots, surely enough i found the Gigabyte m55S-S3 Rev 2.0 mobo for £50, but after taking all my hardware apart i noticed two bent pins on my cpu, i rebend one of them and the other broke off, but lucky me! it was one my system didnt use!, so i googled this new mobo and i found a guy 40 miles away from me living in milton keynes with a ebay auction for this mobo with my cpu! £65 with collection! BARGAIN! and they were only 1 year old.

Two days later i recieve my new gear, hookup my system and surely, we have LIFE! (I had been living off of my xbox playing halo 2 on xbox live for a week) so me being the happy critter i was i hugged my mother, kissed her and told her how much i love her for being so wonderful etc.

I put the system back together and start playing GRID - untill today... about 3 maybe 4 hours ago when i was in GRID, i was viewing an instant replay and all of a sudden my pc's fans sped up and i could feel the extra heat my system was generating, and then...Boom...computer is dead, once effing more.

I cry to myself for half an hour (I'm pathetic, yes i know.) i remove the PSU and take it downstairs to plug it in and jumptest it with two 120mm fans and my sidepanel fan, and surely it didnt power on at all, my mother agree'd with me that the 650watt had died (but how the eff can a psu die from playing a game? all my hardware was hot as hell, i thought that the fans had like died for a short time which resulted in the buildup of heat, even with my uber-cooling hardware)

So now i have to wait till friday to recieve a replica (exactly the same) of my old 750watt, but upgraded to 850watt for an extra £1.30 from ebay!

PS: the 8600GTS still works lol, even tho in the past i blew up an nvidia 5700LE FX gfx card from removing the heatpaste not knowing what it was.

Have you ever wondered it could be the wire in your house that are not good?

Nah the wireing is fine and ironicly we had an electrician over today to check out the wiring in the bedrooms lol

Damn... you need a new, less expensive hobby. You are a decent writer, consider pursuing that!

Sorry to hear about your bad luck.

haha

looks familiar to me. i also blew up my friends psu when his pc didn't start up. i thought, let's switch that 240/120v thing. Bam, some beautiful white smoke came acros our beautiful wondering faces. i like your story!

i hope you have better luck this friday! oh, and Grid is it fun?

Yeh grid is amazing.. its even more fun on the pc with the xbox 360 controller tho

Grieve, i agree with you about me needing a less expensive hobby hehe, but i'm seriously thinking about just getting this pc working then saving up for a new one, that i won't modify at all - probably around the same spec too.

Ever heard of a Prebuilt? LMAO! Don't ever open another computer. I'm suprised you aren't dead yet, or your mom hasn't gave you up for adoption.

Lol, this was pre-built, ive even found the seller on ebay but he doesnt sell the same hardware anymore, but once i get the cash i will e-mail him and see if he can put together the same system.

but thanks for the concern!

This is why it is important to not skimp or buy used psu's.