im not sure but...

[shadow1100mfp]

By hot you mean smoking? I say give up and start collecting stamps or take up hockey...

no smoke, no fire, no stamps and no hockey. i have a hobby, its working on cars. computers,though, pretty much run my house and education, and sometimes entertainment (music and games). by hot i mean able to give first degree burns if you held your hand on the parts long enough, and thats with 2 fans (36inch and 20 inch) on high speed to cool the parts off.

[cooper]

my computer starts pouring out smoke [snip] by pouring, i mean it was going out of every hole on the case, even the holes on the side of the front cover.

[snip]

took the cover off to see what was smoking (burning and melting)

[snip]

full of smoke and still smoking 5 minutes after i unplugged it

I find it hard to believe that something like that would happen, and you're trying to confidently say that if you held your hand to it as it was happening, you'd get at best a first degree burn.

And I think the point Moonlit is (validly) trying to make is that when you figure out that a $30 part in a $500 rig is responsible for trouble, you don't dick around with finding ways to make it work. You replace it. Not doing so puts the remainder of the rig at a significant risk.

[shadow1100mfp]

I find it hard to believe that something like that would happen, and you're trying to confidently say that if you held your hand to it as it was happening, you'd get at best a first degree burn.

And I think the point Moonlit is (validly) trying to make is that when you figure out that a $30 part in a $500 rig is responsible for trouble, you don't dick around with finding ways to make it work. You replace it. Not doing so puts the remainder of the rig at a significant risk.

nono i understand that i need to replace it, but the wires are what is burning, and i didnt touch it i just put my hand near it (i never claimed to be a smart person, infact i do many stupid things, its nothing to be ashamed of) but, the wires are screwed up, that is what was burning, i was talking about the power supply running rather hot (as it has no fan this is understandable. i stopped testing it because after i saw that it did start up i looked around at everything and saw that those wires were melted a little, so i saw no reason to finish testing it, as i know thats what it was. im thinking the wires were just too close to something that was running hot and thats what caused them to melt, because no smoke happened when they werent close to any other part), i just cant tell why they are that way. the only part i touched was the hard drive, to move it a little closer tothe rest of the pile of junk so the cables werent as streched out. however, it isn't $500, more like $175-200 not counting the parts i  already had (hard drive and dvd drive). so i don't feel like pouring all of my money into it, but i would love it if it worked, and if that means a $30 power supply, so be it.

anyway, ill be picking up a spare p/s tomorrow from a friend, since he has a bunch of computers he doesn't use and i fix the computers he breaks (for the most part), he said i could just have a couple. (hooray for freeness!)

[shadow1100mfp]

well theres my problem:

haha. i decided to put everything back in the case after i tested it and found this, because its obviously the power supply.

what happend was, the power supply has 2 chains of connectors, 4 each and then a mini connector on the end, for 3.5 inch floppy drives or whatever (mine is a 3/5 inch floppy).

well, the  hard drive is connected at the last accessory plug on the chain (i only use one chain), and then the cable goes further up to the 3.5 inch floppy and plugs in.

this length of cable (from the hdd to the floppy) burned up and melted, which explains all the smoke.

im actually not at all surprised, since this is right at the front, and this is what i expected happened. (wires burning usually smell the same reguardless of if they are in a car or a computer or even a table saw cord *someone caught it on fire when i had a shop class, yes it was funny but it was also a lesson we all learned: never put down a piece of metal that you got red hot from a band saw (he didnt use lubrication when he cut it). and no it wasn't me*.

well, as i said, i have a couple power supplys waiting for me tomorrow morning, and ill just swap them out and i got me a working computer again =].

thanks for all the help everyone, i would have never seen the cables that melted if i didnt take everything out of the case to test it, because they were hidden behind the cages.

now, off to build an arcade cab to put this thing to use! (even though its 10:30 and i have to get up at 3am lol.)

[SmoothCriminal]

I didn't read any of what you said shadow, but damn you wrote a lot. 

That needed to be said, I know it was on everyone's mind (yes G. W.'s mind too).

Well done!

[shadow1100mfp]

I didn't read any of what you said shadow, but damn you wrote a lot. 

That needed to be said, I know it was on everyone's mind (yes G. W.'s mind too).

Well done!

ahh. im used to writing 6 page essays for school, so i expand alot on everything i say.

[cooper]

Note that everything on that chain is likely to have been zapped by this short, and so you should be careful when attaching those elements in any new computer. Go one at a time and be distrusting of the hardware. Assume the part is likely to die in the short term. Let the part re-earn its spurs before you confidently put it back in use.

I'm quite surprised your PS burnt through right there. The cable is effectively hanging free, so it's not like something was scraping against it, peeled off the isolation and made the cables inside connect. I would've expected the problem to be inside the actual PS unit.