Recently I've been away from home, and I had a chance to head back during labor day weekend. On the way back out I decided to take my pc with me to play mgs 5 at the hotel. During the drive one of the nuts from the bolts on the case fan fell into abyss inside my case. By that mean I couldn't find it. I rattled it lightly until it I figured it was sitting at the bottom of the case. But still couldn't find it. I decided to go to bed, and I went to work th3 next morning. That evening I completely forgot what had happened and I plugged my pc. There was a pop and a flash inside the case.
After about an hour of incoherent raging I decided to open it up and see what exactly broke. I later found the nut under the psu. My guess is that it fell inside the psu and caused a short. But there's still a small chance it could have been touching the motherboard.
In either of those cases, what do you guys think I need to replace?
Replace the psu first. Also look at the parts for poped caps and obvious burn marks around power connectors and on chips. Take the power connectors and inspect those. Do that on the connectors and pcb for all things with a direct connection to psu.
If it helps nothing turns on whenever I press the power button. There's no flash and the fans don't kick in and immediately turn off like what normally happens when you make a small goof up.
I think it might be the psu, but this is first time it's happened to me so I'm not familiar with how it should behave if this happens with any other part. Is there a chance that the entire system is gone for good?
Putting more thought into it, this may be the case. I think the psu shorted to the case. There was a headphone jack touching the side of the case that flashed too. The only way that could have happened is if the psu I shorted to the case
Took apart the psu and the bolt that I dropped had grounded out and struck an arc with one of the little wires going in and bout of the tiny board on the psu. On of them melted in half and it's pssible to solder it back together.. Given I can actually reach it with the soldering iron. The fuse is also blown, but that's no biggie. That being said there's a good chance I might need to buy a new one.
Get a new PSU. Mine failed last Thursday :(. It went out with a screech and I'm worried if it shorted anything... I recommend the EVGA GS and G2 units. They seem solid.
I'm short on cash, so I'm going to try to solder it and replace the fuse. If that doesn't work then I'll go to best buy, since they have corsair psus there
Unless you absolutely know what you're doing, don't bother trying to fix it! Power supplies need to be discharged before servicing, much like CRTs. No one services them anymore. It's just not worth it and dangerous. Those capacitors still hold a charge that can cause serious injury, if not kill you.
Have you done a visual inspection of all your components to see if they were damaged as well? Even though you said it shorted to ground, are you positive it went straight to ground?
if you want decently priced units buy XFX they are high quality and not that expensive. Do not try to fix it yourself, you could end up frying the whole computer, then what are you going to do? you already said you are short on cash.
I ended up getting a new psu. Turns out my cpu also got fucked in the whole deal. I'm using an fx6300 i had laying around until I can afford an 8 core again