Did I kill my new PSU?

LDinos · May 10

Hello! I want your expertise and your opinion on something unfortunate that happened to me. I wanted to make 2 small upgrades:

1) Buy a new midi tower

2) Buy a new PSU

For PC tower I bought the Kolink Observatory HF Glass ARGB Gaming (White), because it included lots of fans

For PSU I bought the Corsair RM750e ATX12V v3 750W (for reference, at the moment I have a Corsair VS550)

I started getting my motherboard out of my old pc and put it in my new one, connected all the PSU cables in the correct spots, and I flicked the PSU you switch. I saw rgb lights in my motherboard which indicates that at least power flows, which is a good thing! Then I pressed the turn on button on my pc and POOF, nothing happened except a small "pft" sound, a burning smell and a slight smoke come out from my PSU. Ouch, time to panic and think that I killed my whole system.

Thankfully, taking the new PSU out and using my current PSU showed that only my PSU broke, since everything is working perfectly as of now, so I guess at least I have a new midi tower...

These days I have been thinking, what did I do wrong? What is the difference between what I connected to my current PSU compared to what I did with my new PSU? And here are the differences I could think of:

1) Maybe the front panel connections were wrong? (instead of + -, I did - + or something?). If so, is this enough to kill the PSU when I click on the power on button?

2) My fans in my new PC are all connected together and have a sata power cable to be used with my PSU so they all get power. However, when building it with the new PSU, i thought one of the fans wasn't linked and connected with all the others, so I connected its 4pin (3pin?) thingy to the motherboard fan slot, EVEN THOUGH it was already getting power from the PSU. Did I perhaps give it "too much power" and burned my PSU because of that? I am not too experienced with fans, so I might be completely wrong about this. I remember the single fan on the back had 2 connectors hanging out, I supposed one is the power and one is the LED controls... Nevertheless, I left those connectors hanging unconnected now

3) Am i just freaking out for no reason and it's just a defected PSU? Although, it's more believable I did something wrong rather than think that Corsair PSUs break so easily

Other than those differences, everything else was connected the same no matter the PSU (for example, I never took my RAM, CPU off, the connections from PSU to motherboard were all at the same places in both sessions etc)

Sorry for my poor language, especially in the tech department... I hope my suspicions make sense in the paragraphs and Im open to all suggestions and questions regarding this

Thanks a lot

My system:

PSU: VS550 (tried to upgrade to RM750e ATX12V v3 750W)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six-Core Processor 3.40 GHz

RAM: DDR4 8GBx4 (32 GB)

GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT

Mobo: Aorus Pro b450

BentleyOwen123 · May 10

first question..... why do you need a 750w psu with 2nd gen am4 and a 6650xt..... i guess thats irrelevant to the problem at hand

the chances that you did something are VERY low, file a warranty claim and get a new unit, cause if it is how your saying, and everything is the same with both psu's, its a bad unit, it happens sometimes, just alert corsair and they'll send you a new one

LDinos · May 10

3 minutes ago, BentleyOwen123 said:

first question..... why do you need a 750w psu with 2nd gen am4 and a 6650xt..... i guess thats irrelevant to the problem at hand

the chances that you did something are VERY low, file a warranty claim and get a new unit, cause if it is how your saying, and everything is the same with both psu's, its a bad unit, it happens sometimes, just alert corsair and they'll send you a new one

Thank you, I already have went to the process of returning the item from the vendor/seller I bought it from

Probably I will ask for a refund and stay with my current PSU since it seems there is no reason to upgrade the PSU after all until I get a juicier system