Where’s the Earth-shattering kaboom?

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By Logan Booker
Jul 15, 2008

Living on the edge is great. Not a literal edge, of course. I can’t imagine building your house on the lip of a precipice would be much fun, especially if the door was on the cliff side and the back door budget was blown on Atari shares.

No, the edge I’m talking about is the one you tiptoe along when your CPU’s running a few hundred MHz above its stable overclock, or ramping the RPM to maximum on your box’s variable speed fans to keep your hardware cool.

In my case, it was demanding just that bit more from the tiny PSU that came with my HTPC. That sucker powered a motherboard, TV tuner, DVD and hard disk drive, a 3.4GHz Pentium 4, four fans, two sticks of RAM and a GeForce FX 5600. And let me tell you, that machine got hot. My Xbox 360 was so envious it refused to red ring of death just so it could keep pace with the HTPC’s gamma-like emissions.

I think I got eight months out of that system before it met an undignified end. I was sitting in my bedroom, happily browsing for ham and fruit porn when I heard a squeal and a pop from the living room. This was followed by the power going out, and another squeal, though this was from me and embarrassingly feminine (or is that alluringly feminine? –ed). A picture of honey-smoked meat molesting an overripe avocado vanished from my PC’s screen and silence blanketed the apartment.

At first I thought it might have been my gaming box, despite the location of the earlier aural indications. I got down on my knees and sniffed the back of my PC, close to where the PSU was located. Other than finding it oddly arousing, I discovered nothing amiss. I made my way out and scanned the living room, looking for signs of smoke, fire or undetonated grenades. Only after a thorough stalking of the space, my nose snorting great whiffs of stale bachelor-pad air, did I determine that my HTPC was the culprit.

Now, I’ve almost killed myself by wiring a PSU the wrong way. Years before I’d attempted to attach a PSU to a case power button using completely random, though confidently executed, directions. When I turned it on, sparks fired out the back, frying the PC, scorching the extension cord it was plugged into and leaving deep, black scorch marks along the skirting board of my room.

In short, the idea of prying open the HTPC to investigate had me terrified. I’d rather have faced a pack of zombie squirrels with a taste for man nut. Yet somehow, I found the courage I needed and cracked the box open.

Of course, nothing happened that would deprive me of a limb, my eyesight or dashing good looks, other than a puff of ozone from the cooked PSU. It was a simple process of salvaging the working parts and committing the busted stuff to the big electronic cloud in the sky.

What did happen is that I learnt my lesson. Sure, it’s nice to push the limits, but not if it means facing your fear of testicle-eating creatures, exploding PSUs or revealing your addiction to food sex to your flatmates.

And not the cool kind of food sex.

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Issue: 111 | April, 2010

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.

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