Can OCing blow a PSU?

[reliefwithbeef]

Hi guys,

I recently bought a Phenom II X4 940, I installed it, it worked great, I started up BF3 and not 2 minutes into the game my PSU blew. I did OC it a bit, would that have caused it to blow? I bought a new PSU and everything is working again. However, I'm afraid to play BF3 incase it blows again. Its a 700w 'Ambiance 80+'. I explained the situation to the guy in the shop and he recommended it to me.
Did the OC cause the PSU to blow?

 

[kramerdk]

What was your old PSU? What other components did your CPU have?

The OC probably didn't cause it to blow. But it does tax the PSU more and if you went over the watts then yes.

 

[reliefwithbeef]

It had the stock HSF, it was a 880w PSU. I have a 6950 and 4GB RAM, which were running perfectly before upgrading the CPU. What could have caused the blow?
First the fuse blew(5A), so I used my monitors kettle lead (fused at 10A), so I think that caused the PSU blow, but what would have caused the orginal fuse blow?

 

[SodiumBenzoate]

This is how I would look at it.
Were you close to drawing 700W of power? You can check your components here http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
How much extra voltage were you trying to trying to draw? Could it have been close to the rail maximums?

I honestly believe that if you only OC'd "a little bit" no answers to those questions would be yes. Most likely is that when all your components starting pulling power at a decent rate for the high requirements of BF3 the so called "weakest link" happened to be in your PSU, and it blew. Most likely just a manufacturer's defect.

That is my 2 cents worth.

 

[reliefwithbeef]

I did that thing in the site you suggested and it came up with 369w.

 

[kramerdk]

Agree with Sodium - most likely a manufacturer's defect and you had a bad PSU. Like anything electronic, they can go bad.

 

[noob2222]

Ive had bad luck with off-brand power supplies, Im sure some of them are fine, but I won't get burned a 3rd time by a cheap power supply.

ocz or thermaltake ive never had a problem with.