what is the purpose of that red switch on the back on a power supply unit?...u can either switch it to 115 or 230. i tried switching it to 230 and my comp doesnt turn on...but it works fine with 115...

what does that little red switch do!!?

In parts of the world 230 volts is the standard voltage available. Don't try that again it you like your computer as is.

I am sorta suprised that it didn't fry your system when you set it to 230v

Pentium 3.2 EE 800FSB /HT
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Corsair XMS 2 x 512 DDR550
WD 74Gig 10,000RPM SATA HD
MSI GeForce FX5950 Ultra 256MB, 256-bit
Creative Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro
Creative Gigaworks S750 7.1 Speaker
Lite-On DVD+/- RW
Lite-On 52/32/52 CD-RW

Hi

If you are using 115V and swithch it to the 230V setting the power supply will act as if it has not enough power.. So it would not have hurt the Motherboard/devices - Luckily.

However if you were in a 230-260 V region, and you were to have selected the 115V setting, expect higher volages generated, but the power supply should be reset (from the Motherboard circuitry) each time an output voltage went out of range.

[I've heard of situations (but don't know how true) where there were "big" problems, wrongly selecting the 115v instead of the 230V setting. Possibly the PSU was not being reset quick enough?]