[SOLVED] PC Spontaneous Combustion...

reubenh · 12-22-2008, 01:22 AM

Hi there. New here, but spent a fair bit of time building and messing with PC's. Anyway, I've been puting together a box to give to my fiance's dad as a Christmas present and it's been doing my head in. First, the old P4 2.8 that I was going to use refused to work, so I gave up on that, and decided to give him my old Athlon 64. Put a new HDD in and intalled Win XP. All no problems. Installed various chipset drivers etc, and went to reboot the machine and it started spewing smoke out the side. Obviously I switched it off promptly and started having a look through, and it turned out the 2 wires running to the PC speaker had melted and begun to burn. No flames thankfully (although only just in time) and no obvious damage to anything except a couple of adjacent wires (reset switch, power LED etc). What I want to know is why it happened. I'm a bit loathe to turn it back on again until I can reach a reasonable conclusion in my head, and feel confident it won't do it again. As it stands I'll have to get the soldering iron out to replace all the front panel cabling... At this stage my theory is that the new HDD I put in was pressing against the PC speaker terminal on the motherboard and created a short, either through the body of the drive, or by pushing the solder joints on the bottom of the motherboard against the chassis. Thus I'm hoping by moving the drive into another drive bay and replacing the burnt wiring I can solve the problem. Please, any thoughts from anyone???
Cheers,
Reuben

groudon185p · 12-22-2008, 01:31 AM

Can we have full specs, What region are you in and what voltage is the psu set at (like 110v or 220v)

**wrench97** · 12-22-2008, 01:39 AM

Try doing this before turning back on> How to Bench Test Your System

reubenh · 12-22-2008, 01:53 AM

OK. Specs are: Athlon 64 3000+, Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 motherboard, 1GB generic DDR400 RAM, 320GB Western Digital HDD, GeForce 6600 256MB video card, CD-RW and DVD-RW. Only thing I've changed is the HDD. Previously system has run perfectly. Will try doing the bench test too.
Cheers,
Reuben

reubenh · 12-22-2008, 04:08 PM

Tried bench test. Seems fine so far. Haven't resoldered the front panel wiring yet though. Still scared of that PC speaker... Oh and I'm in Australia, and PSU is correctly set to 240V. It is a 300W PSU.

dai · 12-22-2008, 07:04 PM

300w looks light for the system check it is putting out 18amps on the 12v line

reubenh · 12-23-2008, 02:37 AM

My mistake, it's a 350W PSU and its rated to 18A on the 12V rail. Have put it all back in the case, and it seems to be running fine. Left the PC speaker disconnected though, just for my own piece of mind...
Cheers,
Reuben

dai · 12-23-2008, 03:31 AM

post back to this thread if it reoccurs
i will mark it solved for now

12-22-2008, 01:22 AM	#1 (permalink)
reubenh Registered User Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Hobart, Australia Posts: 4 OS: Win XP SP2	[SOLVED] PC Spontaneous Combustion... Hi there. New here, but spent a fair bit of time building and messing with PC's. Anyway, I've been puting together a box to give to my fiance's dad as a Christmas present and it's been doing my head in. First, the old P4 2.8 that I was going to use refused to work, so I gave up on that, and decided to give him my old Athlon 64. Put a new HDD in and intalled Win XP. All no problems. Installed various chipset drivers etc, and went to reboot the machine and it started spewing smoke out the side. Obviously I switched it off promptly and started having a look through, and it turned out the 2 wires running to the PC speaker had melted and begun to burn. No flames thankfully (although only just in time) and no obvious damage to anything except a couple of adjacent wires (reset switch, power LED etc). What I want to know is why it happened. I'm a bit loathe to turn it back on again until I can reach a reasonable conclusion in my head, and feel confident it won't do it again. As it stands I'll have to get the soldering iron out to replace all the front panel cabling... At this stage my theory is that the new HDD I put in was pressing against the PC speaker terminal on the motherboard and created a short, either through the body of the drive, or by pushing the solder joints on the bottom of the motherboard against the chassis. Thus I'm hoping by moving the drive into another drive bay and replacing the burnt wiring I can solve the problem. Please, any thoughts from anyone??? Cheers, Reuben

12-22-2008, 01:31 AM	#2 (permalink)
groudon185p Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: NSW, Australia Posts: 288 OS: Vista Ultimate Sp1 My System	Re: PC Spontaneous Combustion... Can we have full specs, What region are you in and what voltage is the psu set at (like 110v or 220v)

12-22-2008, 01:39 AM	#3 (permalink)
wrench97 Moderator, Hardware Team Join Date: May 2008 Location: S.E. Pennsylvania Posts: 18,450 OS: Win7	Re: PC Spontaneous Combustion... Try doing this before turning back on> How to Bench Test Your System __________________ Power Supply and Selection

12-22-2008, 01:53 AM	#4 (permalink)
reubenh Registered User Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Hobart, Australia Posts: 4 OS: Win XP SP2	Re: PC Spontaneous Combustion... OK. Specs are: Athlon 64 3000+, Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 motherboard, 1GB generic DDR400 RAM, 320GB Western Digital HDD, GeForce 6600 256MB video card, CD-RW and DVD-RW. Only thing I've changed is the HDD. Previously system has run perfectly. Will try doing the bench test too. Cheers, Reuben

12-22-2008, 04:08 PM	#5 (permalink)
reubenh Registered User Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Hobart, Australia Posts: 4 OS: Win XP SP2	Re: PC Spontaneous Combustion... Tried bench test. Seems fine so far. Haven't resoldered the front panel wiring yet though. Still scared of that PC speaker... Oh and I'm in Australia, and PSU is correctly set to 240V. It is a 300W PSU. Last edited by reubenh; 12-22-2008 at 04:13 PM.

12-22-2008, 07:04 PM	#6 (permalink)
dai Manager, Hardware Forums Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: west australia Posts: 56,551 OS: win 7 32x 64x rtm	Re: PC Spontaneous Combustion... 300w looks light for the system check it is putting out 18amps on the 12v line __________________

12-23-2008, 02:37 AM	#7 (permalink)
reubenh Registered User Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Hobart, Australia Posts: 4 OS: Win XP SP2	Re: PC Spontaneous Combustion... My mistake, it's a 350W PSU and its rated to 18A on the 12V rail. Have put it all back in the case, and it seems to be running fine. Left the PC speaker disconnected though, just for my own piece of mind... Cheers, Reuben

12-23-2008, 03:31 AM	#8 (permalink)
dai Manager, Hardware Forums Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: west australia Posts: 56,551 OS: win 7 32x 64x rtm	Re: PC Spontaneous Combustion... post back to this thread if it reoccurs i will mark it solved for now __________________