My recent PC upgrade ended up with couple fried CPU’s.

Recently I have tried to upgrade my ITX build cooling. I have compact Lian-Li PC-Q01B case, which uses PSU as air exhaust and for intake you can install one 120mm or 140mm fan.

Along with the fan I have decided to upgrade my trusty FSP Aurum 400W PSU. Mainly because it was non-modular and unused cables would have blocked airflow from the bottom fan. To increase airflow I have decided to go with SFX modular power supply.

I was choosing between beQuiet SFX-L 500 and Fractal Design ION SFX 500W. I have chosen Fractal Design PSU, because I have read that this particular model is manufactured by Sea Sonic. So I expected a high-quality power supply, but it turned out to be defective.

Bellow, I will outline the timeline and weather Fractal Design support will compensate fried parts.

Event sequence

Friday, May 22

Connected PSU to my current PC with Intel I7-6700K CPU. Computer fans were spinning but, I didn’t receive any video output. I have tried to boot system without a video card, tried booting with a single stick of ram in different ram slots. But still could not boot the system.

I have pulled out an old motherboard with Pentium G4400 processor. I have placed motherboard on the cardboard box and hooked up PSU, to make sure that nothing is shorted. And the same situation fans were spinning, but no video output.

After that, I hooked my old PSU to both systems, and none of them were working, so I knew that some components were dead.

Monday, May 25

Picked up used Pentium G4400 for 10EUR. Tried out both motherboards with new G4400 and my old PSU both systems was booting just fine. I can conclude that the Fractal Design power supply has fried both CPU’s. Both of the CPU’s are out of warranty period, so I can’t RMA them.

Wednesday, May 27

Brought PSU to the local retailer for inspection. They also asked to bring not working motherboard and CPU for inspection. I brought both CPU’s with my motherboard.

Friday, May 29

A local retailer repair center has called me and informed me that PSU is defective. They also confirmed that both of the CPU’s were dead.

Friday, July 10

Received a full refund for PSU.

Sunday, July 12

Opened ticket on Fractal Design support system regarding damaged parts due to faulty product

Tuesday, July 21

Received first response from Fractal support. They informed me that they need to inspect PSU, to confirm that parts were fried by PSU.

I have asked them to inspect it by serial number because it was already returned to Fractals repair center by my local retailer.

Friday, September 11

Received reply after almost two months of waiting. I expected a delay due to the ongoing pandemic, but not two months.

Because they could not be certain that CPU fried my CPU’s, they didn’t refund me the cost of the CPU’s. Instead, they offered to choose any product from their lineup. And I have chosen ITX case with the worst cooling potential a.k.a. Fractal Design Era Itx. But I’m a sucker for small cases, especially with wooden panels.

Conclusion

I was excited about this upgrade, but it turned out as a really frustrating one. I have spent a significant amount of time trying to trace and isolate not working part. And for almost past two month’s I have lived with crappy CPU, with noticeably lower multitasking performance. And on top of that, I have lost perfectly functioning parts that I bought with my hard-earned money.

But on the bright side, I have a new case and a reason to upgrade to AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPU.

But I’ll keep updating this blog post with my experience with their support.