[Tfug] power supplies & motherboards

[Harry McGregor]

Hi,

erich wrote:
> OK,
>        I have a vintage 2004 tower that had a power supply failure.
> At least I'm pretty sure it was the power supply: the smell
> of burnt components came from the power supply. The
> motherboard smells/shows no signs of damage.
>
>        Then I heard a rather disturbing thing in a conversation.
> Power supplies have been known to fail on some models
> of computers and take out the motherboard with them.
>
>         So I have two questions:
>
>            1) If a power supply fails, is there a chance that
> it will take out a motherboard?

This can of course happen, depending on the failure in the power
supply.  I have seen far far more power supply failures that did NOT
kill the motherboard, but I have seen a couple that did...

>
>            2) If a motherboard is suspected to have failed.
> will it take out a power supply?
>
Unlikely, power supplies have short protection built in, about the worst
you could do is try to draw more power than the PS can provide, but that
would most likely be noticeable ahead of time.

I would suggest getting a cheap power supply (I know, in general, not a
great idea), and if it works with that, get a good power supply, and
keep the cheap one as a bench supply for testing.


                   Harry


>
>                                                                   Erich
>
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