Question Spark and now no hard drive detected and CPU cooler failing

[DKalisz_67]

Hello everyone. I have been building PCs for a while now but for the first time, I have gotten something that might have royally screwed up my system. I built a new system, contents listed below, and upon booting it for the first time, a noticed a spark that caused some burning plastic smell. As soon as the spark happened, the CPU water cooler failed to work and both hard drives failed to be recognized by the system. The motherboard is still working, still detects all case fans and processor and RAM, still, powers on and still recognizes the correct booting parameters. Judging by the lack of LED in the CPU water cooler, I see that it has shorted out, however, I am unsure of what caused both hard drives from being unidentified by the motherboard. I am not sure what else was shorted out other than the CPU cooler. I am not sure what I need to look for or what the next steps are to take without spending an arm and a leg.

System components:
i9-9900K
Gigabyte Z390 UD AC
DDR4 16 gig RAM
PowerSpec 650 watts 80 Plus Bronze
Crucial 500Gig SSD
Hard drive 500G
Nvidia 1660 super GTX
iCUE H100i cooler

 

[CountMike]

Hello everyone. I have been building PCs for a while now but for the first time, I have gotten something that might have royally screwed up my system. I built a new system, contents listed below, and upon booting it for the first time, a noticed a spark that caused some burning plastic smell. As soon as the spark happened, the CPU water cooler failed to work and both hard drives failed to be recognized by the system. The motherboard is still working, still detects all case fans and processor and RAM, still, powers on and still recognizes the correct booting parameters. Judging by the lack of LED in the CPU water cooler, I see that it has shorted out, however, I am unsure of what caused both hard drives from being unidentified by the motherboard. I am not sure what else was shorted out other than the CPU cooler. I am not sure what I need to look for or what the next steps are to take without spending an arm and a leg.

System components:
i9-9900K
Gigabyte Z390 UD AC
DDR4 16 gig RAM
PowerSpec 650 watts 80 Plus Bronze
Crucial 500Gig SSD
Hard drive 500G
Nvidia 1660 super GTX
iCUE H100i cooler

Sounds like you mixed up fan or pump power and RGB connectors.

 

[mdd1963]

Does the ICUE H100i come with any sort of hub for RGB control? ( I want to say I've read about the potential for hooking this up to a wrong header on mainboard in other distant posts of other Christmas' past)

DO you have another cooler?

If this was a new build, or perhaps an upgrade, did you perhaps mix any modular cables from an older PSU into this one or a newer PSU? (Known to kill drives nearly instantly)

YOU can check functionality of any SATA SSDs or drives by insering them into other system(s) to see if they are recognized, or, are now simply bad.

 

[DKalisz_67]

So, after some digging around and checking each component from the PC, I found that the PSU was faulty and that is what sparked. The PSU essentially overloaded itself and shorted out causing a power issue all throughout the system. I hooked up another power unit and everything came back on and is working just fine. Another issue I found is not all of the screws I was using to attach the motherboard to the case were the same kind and were not all fitting. So, they could have also not been grounded and could have caused another potential issue. I am going to try and return the power supply and see what they can do. Either way, I only paid $50 for it so it is thankfully not a huge loss.

As for the cooler, because of the short, the RGB in the CPU cooler no longer works, but the actual CPU heat distribution works just fine. Which if that is the only thing at a loss here, I'll take it since it could have been much worse. I will definitely be more careful about what I purchase and pay a lot more attention to wires and screws when securing anything to my case again.

Thanks for all of the help!