123

[LightningJR]

321

 

[cucker tarlson]

lol,diablotek

 

[mstenholm]

My girlfriend and I built a PC for her son this xmas, nothing big. It was built using some new parts and some old parts I had over the years. He's only 8 years old and we wanted him to have his first PC be something to mess with and not have to worry about. I knew the PSU was of low quality but it was used before and was reliable enough unfortunately it seems to have fried the GPU and Mobo. Not sure about the CPU since I can't test it but the RAM and HDD is ok. The PC was showing symptoms of a bad PSU, it would just shut off randomly some days a couple times, some days it would go the whole day with no problems. I have had PSUs do this before and every other time the PSU would work until it just wouldn't turn back on. This one unfortunately took some parts with it.

It looks like the PSU pumped out too much and just fried the power traces in the mobo.

Even blew a SMD on the GPU I think.

Looks like the hottest spots have marks left on the case from the mobo but the case is fine otherwise.

Don't buy this PSU.


He doesn't seem too bummed over the PC being fried but he's only 8 and he still has an Xbox One to play. I think the excitement of it all may have played a part too especially since he was on chat with his cousin at the time. lol.


It's still unfortunate especially since his 9th birthday is on the 24th of this month. I have been scouring TPU's buy/sale/trade thread and HWC's same thread and haven't found too much plus we can't afford to buy much since his birthday is coming up and xmas just passed. If anyone knows of any amazing deals that I missed please send the links my way. We're from Canada so hopefully we can find something at a good price that will ship here. We're looking for a PSU, Mobo, GPU. If the CPU is dead then a CPU as well. The DDR3 memory is fine so whatever is found for mobo has to support DDR3 RAM or come with it's own RAM. The dead parts are a Athlon II X4 (Phenom II series - 2009) with a GA-78LMT-USB3 mob and a GeForce GTX460SE 1GB (Fermi - 2010)


Oh just if you were wondering there's no warranty on any of the dead parts as you can imagine.

Looking at the PSU box made me wonder if they really meant three years warranty. Looks more like 2½ to me. Thxs for sharing.

 

[EarthDog]

Diablotek... LOL cant say this wasn't expected. They are notoriously garbage. There is a reason we say to stay away from these things and others like it. How, being a member here for 8 years could you do this to yourself?

Regardless, the main thing here is everyone is OK... that could have been bad!! Lesson learned I suppose.

 

[LightningJR]

987

 

[phill]

I learnt the hard way about poor PSUs a long time ago, around the time I started building systems myself.. I found that just because higher watts sounded better, it was the quality of the watts that made the difference.

A Q Tec 550w unit I had with a socket A system, XP-M and such.. Thankfully no damage but it was overclocking (ironically) that made me change it.. I swapped it out with an Enermax 380w unit and managed to push the CPU and the GPU to newer highs Was very impressed.
That said I've had PC Power and Cooling 1200w units (built like tanks they are) give up on me randomly but they thankfully never took any hardware with me.

Recently I've just been buying some EVGA units, even the cheapest ones I've bought have been fully modular and at least gold rated units. Thankfully I registered them yesterday (had them 6 months!!) and was able to get 12 years warranty with it.. In fact all of the PSUs I've bought and registered with EVGA over last night, are all 12 year warranted units..

Do yourself a favour, grab a decent unit, you really won't look back
That said even decent units need to be replaced, so if things start misbehaving, then swap it out, it's not worth the risk of killing hardware (That said I have to keep an eye on my two AX1200 units... 8 years old now...)

 

[EarthDog]

Damn. Wish I could help out replacing parts.

ha. I didn't buy it, it was a spare I had from another PC, you know how it goes lol. It was all we had, I expected it to work for a few months until we could buy something better.

buy it...use it... both risks.

 

[sneekypeet]

Edited OP to conform to the ToS at TPU. If you are looking to buy things, open a thread in the BST section.

 

[Tomgang]

Ouch, it hurts every time i see damage hardware and it dosent make it any better when it caused by a cheap psu.


I can relate to it. The first oem pc my parrents got back in 2001, the psu fried it self and damage hardware 2 years after they got it. It dit not totally destroy the pc, but some thing whas damage, cause after that. The pc cut boot and be used, but ramdomly make bsod for no good reason.

Dont ever cheap out on the psu, it might cause damage later on to your "precious" and we dont want that. If you get a prebuild system i would advise to tjeck up on psu as well. Cause psu is a typical place oem vendors cheap out on.

 

[eidairaman1]

My girlfriend and I built a PC for her son this xmas, nothing big. It was built using some new parts and some old parts I had over the years. He's only 8 years old and we wanted him to have his first PC be something to mess with and not have to worry about. I knew the PSU was of low quality but it was used before and was reliable enough unfortunately it seems to have fried the GPU and Mobo. Not sure about the CPU since I can't test it but the RAM and HDD is ok. The PC was showing symptoms of a bad PSU, it would just shut off randomly some days a couple times, some days it would go the whole day with no problems. I have had PSUs do this before and every other time the PSU would work until it just wouldn't turn back on. This one unfortunately took some parts with it.

It looks like the PSU pumped out too much and just fried the power traces in the mobo.

Even blew a SMD on the GPU I think.

Looks like the hottest spots have marks left on the case from the mobo but the case is fine otherwise.

Don't buy this PSU.


He doesn't seem too bummed over the PC being fried but he's only 8 and he still has an Xbox One to play. I think the excitement of it all may have played a part too especially since he was on chat with his cousin at the time. lol.


It's still unfortunate especially since his 9th birthday is on the 24th of this month.


Oh just if you were wondering there's no warranty on any of the dead parts as you can imagine.

The name says it all, not even a part of this review database.

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/PSUReviewDatabase.html

From here they tested a 1050 watter and it is crap too.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story4&reid=187

Oem is Sirfa and they are utter rubbish.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

This thread should be stickied so that people can learn what it means to buy a crap PSU

 

[biffzinker]

Not sure about the CPU since I can't test it but the RAM and HDD is ok.

Chances are the CPU is dead but you could check the CPU VRM section for damage. Might have to remove the heat sink.

 

[Naito]

This is what carelessness gets you. Never cheap-out on the PSU if you value anything you hook up to it...

At least this will hopefully stand as a good warning for any system-builder-to-be!

 

[CandymanGR]

And that's why you should NEVER buy cheap psu's.
The End.

 

[Assimilator]

TBH I don't have much sympathy for you. The perils of buying cheap/off-brand PSUs - especially ones that have been reviewed and found to be not just absolute shit, but dangerous - have been well-known and well-documented for over a decade. This is why you do research before you buy.

There's a saying in one of our local languages, Afrikaans (might translate well into Dutch) - "goedkoop is duurkoop", or "cheap is expensive" - i.e. cheaping out on something important often ends up costing you a lot more in the long run, and the PSU is the most important part of your system.

 

[mad1394]

Some people here are being overly harsh. Lesson surely learned. Move on.
I remember buying really cheap power supplies. The fan would start to rattle and then it would fail sometime later. I just bought a new one when it failed as I knew just enough about pcs to be scared to run the power supply fanless )

 

[lexluthermiester]

Regardless, the main thing here is everyone is OK

Agreed. It's good that no one was hurt. Parts can be replaced, lives can not.

Some people here are being overly harsh. Lesson surely learned. Move on.

Also agree here. People need to chill.

 

[Metroid]

psu has to be top priority component and yet novice spend so little on it.

 

[sepheronx]

Oh my lord. Diablotek. I have not seen that name since AMD A series.

I had a Diablotek 300W PSU back in the day on a AMD Sempron 2500+ system (FX 5200 GPU I believe). That PSU was a ticking time bomb.

 

[xtreemchaos]

pick ya self up, dust ya self off and start right off again, just bad luck it could happen to anyone even with a costly psu, look forward to building the next one. charl.

 

[Rendarius]

I see the Lord of Terror has pulled out his last ditch effort to send himself deep into the PC world to avoid his upcoming imprisonment into the realm of mobile devices forever, or a period of time where he will be unable to invade and cause his havoc in the PC and real world realms... The mobile realm will severely limit his power and he knows it and knows his time is nearing...
You allowed him to utilize and exercise a level of his evil powers that has not been seen and heard of for some time now...
He waited patiently knowing one day someone would once again utilize his evil device(s) and allow him his chance at creating and causing his Flames of Terror upon the unsuspecting PC user...

Sorry this happened, but at least you still have your house and home... and maybe a cpu too...
He could have caused much more terror than he did...
Maybe the angels blessed you with some protection, or maybe he's losing his powers already in the lead-up to his containment within mobile devices fast approaching...

To note, - Ive had I think 4-5 OEM cpus over the years, and only had one PSU blow on me... no fires or wreaked parts... Only had one blow when I installed a GPU and exceeded the cpu's needed amount of watts.. So depending on the OEN and company, - they are not really all that bad... but I stress... the make and company matters a lot Id assume...
I was something I forget, another was a eMachine lol... another a Sony Vaio... and the others were 2 Gateway cpus..
The PSU blew on the Sony.... or MAYBE the 1st Gateway... its been a while...
From installing an ATI x700 ...

Also hello and glad to finally have made myself a member of a community Ive planned to join for years, but,.. I guess stupidity prevented it... or lack of time and reason...
...hmm should I thank Diablo, the Lord of Flaming Terrors ?/..
Glad again it wasnt worse. And your kid will be fixed up soon Im sure.. And hopefully he wont even notice due to his XBox = )

 

[Vayra86]

What's in a name huh