The Singapore Forum

A sudden reboot followed by a futile attempt to reboot ..... lights flickering and fans coming to a standstill.... the smell of electricity and there went my power supply (I think)

Looks like the power supply can generate enough power to turn the fans and lights on (and mobo) for a few seconds before it goes dead again. Can it be something else than the power supply? This one had 400W and was doing fine for 3+ years so an equal replacement should be fine. Fingers crossed that the harddisks are ok

There are several different transformers in the power supply, separate ones can fail, giving you nothing on your mainboard, for example, but still giving you power to drives etc.

A visit to the nearby computer shop confirmed that it was the power supply (Burb was spot on)