Did Windows 7 blow my power supply?

Hi guys. Sorry to dig up an old thread but same thing happened to me this morning, dead PSU, sleep mode + Win 7.

PSU: Chieftec 450w, mobo: Gigabyte EP-31-DS3L. The PSU was very hot and tripped the the voltage stabilizer it was hooked to. Strong smell of burnt plastic in the room, so will not try to revive it. Have a spare PSU around, but am wary of using Win 7 in sleep mode again.

Like some of you, I wonder if its something related to Win 7. Because this never happened to me in 'standby mode' in XP. I've only been using Win 7 in this PC for a few weeks. Also have Vista in another machine which is always in sleep mode, but never had a problem with that either. I'm thinking it must be an odd combination of PSU, mobo and Win 7, because if it was a widespread problem, MS would have done something about it. I hope we can find out exactly whats going on here and if its fixable.

p.s. another thing I should mention is that there was a USB modem hooked up to it and it was always very warm even in sleep state.

Windows 7 has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with a PSU failure! Period!

If someone thinks that it does then they don't understand PSUs and software.

Not only does it have nothing to do with PSU failure, Chieftec power supplies are know to be (apologies for being rather frank) utter rubbish.

Cheiftec is poor quality for sure. The odor you smelled was more than likely an electrolytic capacitor frying out or the voltage rectifier itself.

Go buy yourself a top-quality power supply such as Antec, Seasonic, OCZ, Corsair, BGears, Coolermaster, Thermaltake, etc.

Make sure it's rated as an ATX12V / EPS12V unit and 80 PLUS certified.

has someone mentioned to try another PSU (I'd do that first in fact)

also try to clear CMOS jumper on your motherboard, try using it (3 pins which you close the 2 normally left open, then return jumper to original position.Usually near the battery, often labelled CMOS or clear CMOS or jbat). Often 'wakes up' a dormant mobo - but even if it does, mobo may be on its way out.check the power cord also?

If neither of these make a difference, I'd suspect mobo is dead.
PS. You could also disconnect everything you can from the mobo (hard, floppy & optical drives, any unneeded to boot PCI cards ) to see if you can get a POST screen.
hope this might help.good luck with it.
regards
jeffreyobrien

Even if for whatever reason the PSU fan stopped, just about if not all PSU's of the past few years have a thermal safety on them to switch off if they were overheating.

The only way I've ever known you can hurt a PSU is if your constantly pulling it's full capacity of power in which case you need to upgrade to a larger unit.

I believe since the OP stated that the PSU was extremely hot that the problem is there and not with a the motherboard.

In addition, he stated that it tripped the "voltage stabilizer", which definitely means a bad power supply. A motherboard issue would not cause that to trip off.

Low-end power supplies don't have the thermal safety switches on them because they're a low-end unit.