[SOLVED] 2 PSU capacitor blown after new CPU installation.

Jun 24, 2020
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I have been browsing these forms religiously these past few days to find an answer to what is going on with my PC. ( I will link my PC specs at the bottom)

I recently made a purchase of an I7-9700k to upgrade to from an I7-7700k. With that, I also purchased a new CPU cooling fan, the Noctua NH-U12A. After taking out my old CPU and installing the new one and the new cooler, I turned my PC on to hear a loud pop - to my confusion I looked and saw it was one of the little blue capacitors that you can see through the rear grate of the PSU. There is this black/grey liquid leaking out of it and it is now hardened. There is NO smoke coming from anywhere in my PC. With that, I figured "oh my PSU must've went bad after the few years it went through." I ordered a new PSU (EVGA Supernova 850 P2 Platinum 80) and that PSU did the same thing. Same little blue capacitor blew up and leaked out the black/grey goo. Now, I have asked around with my friends and other forums and was curious if anyone had insight of what I should do to solve this issue. I have checked wiring, cables for stripping and replacing them. Many methods to attempt to get it to be even functional or even boot up to BIOS, which I can't. You might already know, but my MOBO gets power as I can see the RBG lights lighting up and other components but will not boot when pressing the power button nor any other method of turning the PC on. I had a spare PSU from years ago and put my 7700k back into my MOBO and the same thing happened. Is this possible an issue with my MOBO giving out and frying everything? If so, will my GPU and CPU be dead when I remove them and possibly rebuild a new PC?

[Side note about my MOBO]
I read a lot of how the Apex is an overclocking mobo and usually enthusiasts that enjoy overclocking their components might choose this one. I learned that this mobo was actively automating my CPU and GPU overclocking and causing issues of overheating as I wasn't prepared for that and would turn my system off. At some point a couple months back, I entered the BIOS and turned off the automated OC and changed the XMP profile to better suit the voltage that my CPU would need to run at a normal level for the games that I would play. My friend told me that may be the cause that the new CPU required a new version of BIOS (which I did not think consciously to update ever) and would default to the original XMP profile without having the right version for the CPU in the socket and cause a "meltdown". I might be talking out my behind at this point as my knowledge on overclocking is minimal at best and I try to avoid it to prevent issues with my parts. Granted, I'm the dummy that purchased the Apex.

GPU - EVGA 2080 Ti 11gb
CPU (Old and New) - i7-7700k Kaby Lake, i7-9700k Coffee Lake
MOBO - ASUS ROG Maximus IX Apex
RAM - G.Skill 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 Trident Z
PSU (Old and New) - EVGA Supernova 750 G3, 80 Gold Plus , EVGA Supernova 850 P2, 80 Platinum Plus
Surge Protector - APC P11U2, 2880 Joules
 
Solution
RMA the new PSU and breadboard the PC outside of the case with minimum components.

If your friend thinks the problem is a BIOS issue, I would stop taking advice from this friend because they don't know what they're talking about. There's no BIOS that will cause a "meltdown" and if they knew what they were talking about, they'd have known at a glance that you'd never be able to run an i7-9700k CPU on this motherboard. Z270 motherboards can't run any Intel 8000 or 9000 series. The socket has the same amount of pins but they're not electrically compatible.

I'd also get the surge protector out of the loop and test using a different circuit at your house.

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
RMA the new PSU and breadboard the PC outside of the case with minimum components.

If your friend thinks the problem is a BIOS issue, I would stop taking advice from this friend because they don't know what they're talking about. There's no BIOS that will cause a "meltdown" and if they knew what they were talking about, they'd have known at a glance that you'd never be able to run an i7-9700k CPU on this motherboard. Z270 motherboards can't run any Intel 8000 or 9000 series. The socket has the same amount of pins but they're not electrically compatible.

I'd also get the surge protector out of the loop and test using a different circuit at your house.
 
Solution
Jun 24, 2020
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Oof. Quite honestly, I am extremely embarrassed I didn't even think of the chipset on the mobo and the compatibility with the CPU. That definitely will be the source of the issue and will heed your advice of RMA, breadboard and stop taking advice from that friend. Perhaps next time I will use my brain a little more when purchasing upgrades for my PC. Thank you.
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Oof. Quite honestly, I am extremely embarrassed I didn't even think of the chipset on the mobo and the compatibility with the CPU. That definitely will be the source of the issue and will heed your advice of RMA, breadboard and stop taking advice from that friend. Perhaps next time I will use my brain a little more when purchasing upgrades for my PC. Thank you.

It's the source of one of your issues. Why you had capacitors fail in two PSUs is a whole different thing.
 
Jun 24, 2020
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I did some research of what these things are and I could only find one resource that said what they were. Only thing I could find was this blog for "PSU anatomy" that explained what was inside of inside the PSUs. They look like round resistors that you would put on a circuit board.

"The two little blue discs are yet more capacitors "

https://www.techspot.com/article/1967-anatomy-psu/
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