Another PSU blows up, and takes out a motherboard along the way

I’ve never been a fan of HP machines. To me, they are bottom of the barrel. But I got one on freecycle so I figured why not. Well, I bench checked it and the motherboard was shot. Ok, so I get a new motherboard, bench test it, and we’re good to go. I install it in the case, abd BANG, the thing blows up. The BIOS chip cracked and half and the smoke came out.

I figured this was infant mortality, took it back, and the computer store said, well, we want to see it installed, so we can check it all, before giving you a new one. It makes sense, but thats another 2 hours of screwing around. This HP junk is getting spendy. So I figured on doing some debig myself.

Sure enough, the stinkin HP cheap rotten PSU is putting out 12V instead of 5V. Apparently it blew up, and in being cheap, the guys skipped a crowbar. As a result, I now need another PSU, and yet another motherboard. I had less than 5 minutes on the old one.

I guess you get what you pay for. I’m going back to IBM