Thought I'd turn it on this evening!

BANG!

And now it's smellin' rather funny. Reckon I've cooked the power supply unit. About to take it apart and see if its smoking from anywhere. So glad I've got this new one though, if my old one was on the way out anyway.

Edit: All the components seem OK - anyone got a spare one says 115/240V,output 145w.

Looking a little burnt out in places.... Think I'll be throwing this away, but justcouldn't help myself opening it up for a look

Drop it in the bin and buy a new one. 145w aint much unless it's an old Micro ATX based PC. If it's for a tower system with P4 or equiv, DVD drive etc then you should opt for at least 300w. I bought a quiet 400w PSU for

Its an Athlon 750, dated machine with sod all in it - 192mb RAM is about the highlight. Two HDDs. Will a more powerful PSU not be bad for the rest of the components? Was hoping someone had a scrap machine I could borrow the PSU from.

Will a more powerful PSU not be bad for the rest of the components?

No. The power rating on the PSU is (should be ) the amont of power that it can safely supply without doing what yours has

It's still going to supply the same voltage as the old one.

Aha! PC numpty here - Never even opened up a PSU before let alone had one blow up on me.

But to be honest, I'm quite worried about the motherboard connector. Is that a standard connector as I'd be dubious about any other PSU as it might have a different connector to the motherboard? Micro Star N1996?

All ATX motherboards use the same connector, apart from the most recent ones which have a 24pin as opposed to 20 pin. But you can plug a 20 pin in a 24 if you don't have a 24pin.

Anyway, I might stick one of my old PSUs on ebay for you :P And you can stick yours on saying "sold as seen" with a that nice pic of yours

Seriously J, I spent about

Several benefits to buying a decent PSU:

* It will have a cleaner output so less likely to cause problems if you OC it

* It will run cooler as it's not loaded as hard (145W with the old Athlon is borderline if you stick a bit of extra RAM + 2nd CDRW or similar + 2nd HDD - it will be right on the limit)

* If you got a noisekiller one or equivalent it tends to be more quiet due to the above. But generally speaking if you spend a little more you will get higher-quality fans. It's not the number of fans that counts though, it's the noise (plus air shifted, it's always a compromise )

* Brands - there are loads of them. Some are basically no-brand. If you go for one of those, get one that is 300W minimum as that will be the max power (no pun intended :P ) so it will still run yours without a problem. If you get say an Enermax or a similar brand, you can drop a little lower as it should cope fine, but I'd just get a 300W one, and be done with it

OK, thanks for the tips. Might give Ebay a look then. This PC is worth sod all so I'm a little loathed to spend much on it (Its not a well used PC now by any means )

If it's a standard size PSU, go to Aria.co.uk or similar, they have some cheapo PSUs that work well for what you're after

How about:

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductsList.asp?Category=96&SubCat=&Name=&Page=1&NumberPerPage=100&SortBy=1

Have a look at the ones that cost 6.95 or 7.95 - they'll do the job just fine.

Make sure though that you have a standard PSU (the blown one) rather than a micro-ATX one, as a standard one will probably not fit.

Also some cheapo power supplies here, should get you going. You need an ATX one by the looks of those pics.

I have one upstairs, found it the other day, a spare from a dismantled pc, pm me your address and i'll stick it in the post

I have one upstairs, found it the other day, a spare from a dismantled pc, pm me your address and i'll stick it in the post

I saw this too late! :( Thanks for the offer though. In the end I won one for about