I got a used computer on Saturday at a yard sale. I bought it for the case, although it came with a motherboard and power supply but no drives or video card.
I put a video card into the machine, along with an IDE drive and the system ran fine.
I replaced the motherboard with one known to be good: I pulled it from a working computer. I wanted to be able to use SATA drives in the "new" case. The power supply did not have any SATA power cables so I used the molex-sata power adapter cables.
When I turned the system on with the first SATA drive in the system a component on the drive smoked and the drive is dead. The component is a surface mount plastic two-terminal (I think) device about 1/8 x 3/16 inch. I can just barely read C651 on the device.
I swapped out the power supply for a second unit, and put in another SATA drive. I checked voltage to the molex and it was 11.86 volts and 5.09 volts.
It happened again, when I turned on the power I killed the second SATA drive.
I took my motherboard out of the new case and put it back in the my old case. Everything runs fine.
I put another power supply in the "new" case, this power supply did have SATA power cables. Back into the case went my motherboard. Again, upon power up a third SATA drive was blown. The SATA cables coming from the power supply had an extra orange wire that the molex adapter cables do not have.
Three SATA drives down the drain. IDE drives work fine.
The last drive that burned up had only the SATA power cable connected. That means the motherboard is out of the picture.
I have run out of expendable SATA drives. Any idea of what might be the problem?