I was on my computer today and all of a sudden I hear this "phfff." It was pretty muffled. I look over and there's smoke billowing out of my power supply. My computer is running just fine however. I close everything down and shut off the computer. I pulled out the PSU, opened it up and blew the dust out of it. No bug parts came out so I'm thinking maybe it is bad. So I plug it back in and turn it on and it's humming along just fine. Nope. Nothing wrong. Generally when you let the magic smoke out of your computer it stops working. In this case I'm thinking it was probably just a small bug that got obliterated by the high wattage "towers" that are in a PSU. I don't care about the magic smoke that makes bugs work. I looked around on-line and couldn't find any examples of smoke comming out of a PSU that didn't result in someone running out and buying a new one. I've never seen a story of smoke coming out but the PSU still working. Maybe people just generally freak out and don't bother to verify that there's actually a problem. I mean it is smoke coming from your computer. I don't think I've ever had a power supply actually burn out. The only thing I've had go bad (typically just noisy) is the fan which is about a $10 fix if you know how to cut and strip wire. Sometimes you're lucky and the PSU fan just plugs in and isn't soldered to the circuit board. Has anyone ever had smoke billow out of their computer but nothing was actually broken?
If you see my box you will faint right there on the spot. I don't know how it' still working Yeah I have seen smoke sometimes. And even smelled it. But maybe I am lucky ehhehehe. So its still going on.