PC problems following PSU failure. Identify what components failed and determine the cause.
PC problems following PSU failure. Identify what components failed and determine the cause.
Hey there, friends. This year has been quite a challenge with my setup. I recently had my PC repaired—my old motherboard was dead, and my 1070 stopped working, so I swapped it out for a new one and got an RX 6800. Last Thursday, after taking the machine off and leaving it idle for nearly half an hour, I heard a sharp *POP*. Looking around, smoke was coming from the power supply, and my computer was still running. I rushed over, flipped the PSU switch, and quickly unplugged everything. There was a strange liquid leaking from the PSU, smelling like burnt parts. I’m not sure if a capacitor failed. The next day (Friday), I bought a Thermaltake 700W Smart from Best Buy and installed it. It worked fine for a day until strange crashes started. I’d see BSODs with red lines on the screen or messages like “Drive Not Configured,” though I can’t recall the exact wording. Eventually, my Windows 11 installation stopped booting, so I reinstalled it. It ran for a day before becoming unstable again. When it started acting up, it would warn me about corrupted programs—like the BF2042 I downloaded that kept reporting its .exe was damaged. After checking, it matched the same issue. It even seemed to wipe out my GPU drivers and defaulted to basic ones. I discovered that turning off XMP in the BIOS helped, but after a while of playing games and using Windows, the PC still became unstable quickly. I’m looking for advice on what might be wrong—maybe it’s the motherboard or RAM. I need some testing methods to pinpoint the problem without buying unnecessary parts. Also, I’d appreciate a way to check my GPU so I can confirm it wasn’t affected. Thanks for any tips! I just want my computer to function properly. Here are my specs for reference:
- Case: Fractal Design Focus G (Red)
- CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X (stock)
- RAM: Sillicon Power RGB 3200MHZ, 16GB x2 (32GB total)
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus B450 Pro WIFI
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800 (slightly overclocked/UV)
- PSU: Thermaltake Smart 700W 80+ (old unit: Rosewill ARC 750W 80+ Bronze)
- Storage: 1TB Western Digital Green SATA SSD, 1.5TB Toshiba 2.5 HDD, 6TB HGST HDD
- 3.5” PS: [link to post]
Let me know if you need more help!
Switched from a solid PSU to a poor one and now the thermaltake trash comes back. It’s a decent Corsair RMA (RAM) X or blank option at 750W. Storage device or board control seems to be having issues. @Crunchy Dragon had a good idea with a bootable USB.
Looking for a version with stress-testing tools? I can suggest options that offer those capabilities.
I completed a new Windows setup, which felt unusual. My SSD seemed to be failing at first, so I erased the Win 11 drive and tried another installation. After using the Partition Wizard, I cleared and reformatted the whole SSD. It had two main drives—one for my operating system and another for games to speed up loading.
I would simply obtain the newest Ubuntu release and proceed from there. If your flash drive has sufficient capacity, you can attempt downloading Linux-compatible Steam games.