I blew my computer up last night...

aidan_walsh

Kinda. No, really. The lights in half the house cut out about half nine, so I went out to the fuse box and reset the switch. And it tripped again, with an impressive yet worrying looking green light sparking out of it. At least it stayed up when I reset it the second time. Unfortunatly, I had the machine working at the time...
I quickly ran into the room to make sure it was ok... It wasn't. The monitor and printer were powering on fine, but the computer just wouldn't respond. To top it off, there was a smell of something burning coming out of the fan slots...

I quickly disconnected the thing and opened her up, and carefully unplugged the cables connecting my HDDs and fans to make sure nothing there was damaged. The memory seemed fine and none of the other connections on the motherboard were damaged. I'm guessing that the power supply unit was fried though, as the machine is still totally unresponsive...

Only bought the case four months ago, I can't see how I would have worn it down already... The most intensive use its had was only last week when I had to leave it on 16 - 18 hours running doing a zero write to my primary HDD (another long story).

So now I have to try to negotiate with the guys I bought it off, see will they do anything for me...

Just needed a rant, sorry... Exam pressure and all building up at the same time...

Stephen

i guess the power surge when you flipped the switch knackered the PSU. Just buy a new one and slot it into your case. I can't the the guys you bought it off replacing it for free.

aidan_walsh

I guess not... Just that its still under warrenty, so I at least thought I might try it. Postage to the UK and back would probably be more than the cost of a new PSU anyhow...

Heres the strange thing... I have a surge protector connected. Its also protecting my monitor and printer... So I'm thinking its either a lousy piece of crap, or maybe something went wrong inside the PSU itself...

astrofool

check that the "protect" light is still on the surge protector (they can and do burn out).

Check that the motherboard has no leaky capacitors (the sort of cylinder type things with metal caps on them).

If you can carefully open the psu and see if you see any black marks in it. Check that this won't void the warranty tho, if u want to return it.

Check the plug that the computer is plugged into (again very carefully, use an electric screwdriver, has a bulb to test for live wires), cut the power to the house while doing this, and don't go grabbing wires.

--

I had a case like this, the plug was wired wrongly, causing the power to trip (loose connection), the first time it fried the surge protector, so when they turned it back on it wasn't surge protected, and proceeded to fry the psu the second time (i wasn't on site at the time).

Also, older motherboards used to have leaky capacitors, asus/abit/gigabyte were all caught with it, abit was the only one to admit a problem, and now uses rubycon (the best) capacitors, the other two never said a thing, despite lots of problems, and abit cemented their name as the enthusiast m/board manufacturer by admitting when they're wrong. This was in the kt133a era.

That also caused unresponsive motherboards, and fried electrical components as traces got short. Luckily its REALLY obvious if a capacitor is leaking, you'll see an orange type substance around them.

aidan_walsh

Thanks for all the advice, astrofool.

The protect light was still on last night after the surge.

Unfortunatly, opening the PSU will void the warrenty, the big white tape on it told me so Everything else looked fine.

I'm going to send an email to the supplier tomorrow, see what they're willing to say, though I'm not holding out on much. But the surge "protector" is definatly going to be replaced, just to be on the safe side.

Actually, now that I think of it, can anyone recommend the protector that they use? How long have you had it?

echomadman

way to not follow basic precations when switching back on after a power cut

1: Unplug everything . esp monitors/pcs/tvs
2: flick tripswitch back
3: plug stuff back in one at a time.

this allows you to isolate the faulty appliance (if there is one)

you'll know in future

aidan_walsh

This is the model that was supplied with the case, and is listed by the company that sold me the case as being €70 approx to buy seperate. Not the most expensive model you can get, but nothing to be sniffed at on a student expense at that. Bear in mind that I have already spent €2100 building the machine only four months ago, and that was the bulk of my savings from the summer... Now I have to replace that and buy a new surge protector, seeing as how the current one doesn't seem to be up to the task...

MarkR

Oddly enough, i'm working on another computer (not mine) with the exact same problem, except power went on the whole road. I changed the PSU with another spare I had. I didn't really think it was the psu, as it was still powering the monitor. Think he's fried the board myself (my guy, not sure about you)

Winters

I had a problem last year when after work i got home and turned on my pc and nothing happened exepct a long beep.
After replacing everything I discovered that the PSU had blown. No reason for it doing so either, was working grand like 12 hours previous. A few month earlier actually when i had it open i moved some of the loose cables inside and got a nice big blue flash. Unplugged it for a few minutes, plugged it back in and turned it on and it was grand. Very weird. Only thing that was going through the power was the ground, +5v. Still never knew what the cables touched or what happened.
Try and get your hands on a spare PSU and see if it works.

I have a surge protecter but upgraded to a APC UPS about a month ago. Im waiting for my next powercut, surge or anything to see it in action.

aidan_walsh

Well, I sent an email to the comapny yesterday, and within a half hour I got a reply telling me to feel free to send the PSU back for testing.

MarkR, thats an interesting problem. Can you tell me if your guys board seemed to be damaged (any visible markings or fusings)? Want to rule out this terrible possibility...

po0k

Most surge protectors come with some sort of insurance for connected equipment which gets damaged.
You'll have to send the surge protector back tot he manufacturer (or someone who can test and examine it) and they might pay out.
You *could* get a second machine out of it, or an x800

aidan_walsh

Well, it turns out that more damage than I thought had been inflicted. Having gotten a loan of a spare PSU off a friend, I rejoyced when I got the GRUB boot screen. Went into windows, started a scan disk over my two hard disks to make sure everything was ok.

And thats when everything stopped. Not even the mouse would respond. I hit it off at the button and rebooted. This time, it wouldn't even recognise the drives were there. I'm starting to think now that the motherboard could be gone...

It went into the shop yesterday (amidst my protests) and I'm getting it back on Monday. I'll only be told what I already know... Going to have to send the motherboard back as well... :mad:

Just an update for those who may care / learn...