Help!

[Colecr]

This is my first post, so apologies if I waffle and don't get to the point quickly.

in essence, I made a noob mistake. My friend just built his first, budget PC, and he wanted me to help check it over. (There was dreadful cable management and only one fan, but that's beside the point). I noticed that his solitary fan wasn't connected to the mobo, so I plugged the 4 pin cable in. When we turned it back on, smoke started billowing out and we quickly shut it down. When we took it apart, I realised that he had connected the fan to the psu before I connected it to the mobo, which had obviously caused a short circuit, and burnt the yellow power wire, as well as the corresponding pin, and exposed the copper - though it didn't seem to affect anything else  I turned the computer on without a fan, and ran a quick stability test, where everything seemed fine. I was just wondering if we just connected the fan to the mobo header, would it go up in flames again? Also, the psu is non-modular, so we can't remove the affected cable. Would it be fine to just wrap the affected wire in electrical tape, or is it best to replace the psu completely?

If you can see any other problems, please point them out. Thanks!

[Electronics Wizardy]

pics?

 

This is very unlikey to happen and should never happen. 

 

What exact plug on the psu did you use. You shouldn't be able to just plug a fan into the psu.

[Princess Luna]

Does the fans have MOLEX? you could connect it straight to the mobo using them, the only down side is that they will work on max speed forever.

 

I would avoid trying the same fan on the same header 

 

[knightslugger]

shrink tube would be a better solution, but that would require pulling the cables out of the connector, which is not a noobish task to perform.

 

i would tape them up (individually so that nothing copper touches anything but a non-conductive surface) and start looking for another PSU

[DioOmicida]

If everything is properly plugged into it's correct connections, this shouldn't happen.
You should just double-check your connections are properly secured.
I also wouldn't recommend having the system turned on without a system fan connected less you burn out your CPU.

[Colecr]

There was a wire coming out of the psu, with multiple molex connectors on the same wire. He'd connected the fan to one of the connectors using an adapter, and I just followed the wire down, somehow found a 4 pin connector and plugged that into the mobo. I didn't see that the wire was connected to the psu, as the cables were in a complete rats nest.

[Colecr]

3 minutes ago, DioOmicida said:

If everything is properly plugged into it's correct connections, this shouldn't happen.
You should just double-check your connections are properly secured.
I also wouldn't recommend having the system turned on without a system fan connected less you burn out your CPU.

Yep, I turned it off once I booted it and ran a very quick stability test, and told him not to touch it.

[Colecr]

13 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Does the fans have MOLEX? you could connect it straight to the mobo using them, the only down side is that they will work on max speed forever.

 

I would avoid trying the same fan on the same header 

 

Are all 4 pin headers the same?

[Princess Luna]

Just now, Colecr said:

Are all 4 pin headers the same?

Pretty much

[Colecr]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Pretty much

It's just that there was 'sys-fan' marked under the 4 pin I used, and not any others

[Princess Luna]

Just now, Colecr said:

It's just that there was 'sys-fan' marked under the 4 pin I used, and not any others

It will do the same thing as the others though, this is just for the BIOS to organize itself, for instance if you try to boot with nothing on the CPU-FAN it will give you an alert, however you can just plug your CPU cooler on the SYS-FAN for instance it will work the same way... with a few exceptions to the rule being like older equipment: if you use the SYS-FAN the cooler works on maximum speed all the time without adjusting itself according to demand... still useful nonetheless should your CPU-FAN break or anything.

[Colecr]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

It will do the same thing as the others though, this is just for the BIOS to organize itself, for instance if you try to boot with nothing on the CPU-FAN it will give you an alert, however you can just plug your CPU cooler on the SYS-FAN for instance it will work the same way... with a few exceptions to the rule being like older equipment: if you use the SYS-FAN the cooler works on maximum speed all the time without adjusting itself according to demand... still useful nonetheless should your CPU-FAN break or anything.

Brilliant, thanks!