Legit Reviews

Since the begining of this month (MAY) , I started to get "BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH or BSOD" , when I play games or other heavy duties And sometimes in idle. I re-installed XP by thinking it was an OS issue. But BSOD continued with freezes and crashes.
From the past 1 week, Whenever the computer starts, atleast 1 of the hardware won't load its driver. For eg: Videocard, Soundcard...etc. If they both load their drivers, AVG Antivirus doesn't work. Guessing that it was a virus, I tried to re-install AVG, but during the next bootup it won't go beyond the windows loading screen and simply restarts! Then I thought of re-installing XP, but during installation it won't copy some of the files from the CD to Harddisk. Tried it with another CD, didn't help! Got another CD-ROM and tried, didn't help! Finally I installed XP through network!!! And What? Antivirus won't load during start-up...Most of the softwares can't be installed as their services couldn't be started/loaded...
I couldn't take it anymore!!! I got memtest86 on a floppy and checked for RAM errors....got a hell of a lot of errors on it...I was very happy to find that and went straight to the shop to get a brand new ram. When I came back and pressed the power button the comp, It just wouldn't switch on (this is even before opening the case or putting the new RAM). I opened up the case to see what was going on inside and guess what I found??? SMOKE!!! coming from Motherboard!!!
Now Tell Me , Who Was The Real Culprit Here??? Motherboard/PSU/Memory/Harddisk/Processor/Videocard ???
Please Help!!!




Specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon X2 4400+
Motherboard: Gigabyte (GA-M55S-S3) [Nforce 550]
Videocard: Powercolor Radeon X1950 pro 512mb
Harddisk: Samsung 200Gb
RAM: Corsair 1024mb 667mhz
PSU: 450W
OS: Windows XP

where was the scorching/flames/smoke coming from specifically? can you describe,name, or take pix of it?

Who Was The Real Culprit Here

The little computer pixies that you didn't feed did it.

Like skierkid said, if you can narrow down where the smoke was coming from, then that should help. Else if not it is just guessing and that doesn't prove anything

Are there any blown capacitors on the motherboard? Are there any leaky ones?

Dan

I have highlighted the area from where the smoke came with green color... ...No visible blown capacitors or leaky ones...I didn't use a magnifying glass though

Looks like some mofsets have smoked.

It's more guesswork than anything but it's either the PSU or the motherboards fault (presuming that nothing metal was shorting contacts that weren't meant to be).

What is the PSU's make and model?

Dan

POWERMAN
Model no: IP-S450Q3-0
450W Output

Is that a crappy brand???

Unless it is a re-badged FSP one, then yeah, it's not so great.

Find out here

Dan

Yep like Dan said it was wither a short (unlikely if your computer worked before and you didn't touch anythhing) or the PSU/board went crazy. I'd replace both personally, but PSU first.