PC Power Supply Failure
 

Alright - I am not sure if this would be the correct newsgroup - if not,
please point me in the right direction - thanks!

I have had a catastrophic power supply failure in my PC and I would like
to know if this type of scenario is uncommon and what exactly might of
happened to cause this.

I was moving my server from one location to another - it had been
running for about 2 months straight without any problems. I plugged it
in and hit the power button. There was a loud rattling noise from the
power supply for about 1 or 2 seconds, then I got smoke, a nasty smell,
and a dead PSU.

I have had power supply's die before - I just replace them. On this one
however, the whole PC was dead. Motherboard, hard drive, cdrom, floppy,
everything. Also, the monitor that it was connected to was dead - no
picture at all, but the power light did come on, and the keyboard was
also dead. Fortunatly I did not have a network connection, because I
fear I may of toasted all of the other PC's on the network.

Has anyone else ever seen this or heard of it - it just seems too wierd!

Thanks in advance,

~ Matt

My sister's PC went up in a similar vein to this. When I opened the PC, I
found that ram had actually caught fire and singed the simm sockets. To
check if this has happened to you, and if it has, I am sorry, because there
is almost nothing you can salvage from it. Look at hard drives and cd rom /
dvd rom, check for any chips that have cracks, or bits blown out of them.
even graphics card and ram can possibly have parts physically blown apart. I
theorize that her power supply's +5 volt rail was driven high maybe to
around 40 volts and blew everything to pieces.

Paul

I agree with Paul - it looks bad. But it's not weird, the supply failed in
a way which put excess voltage on everything. That's why so much circuitry
died. Your monitor is probably OK but the video driver in the computer is
dead. You wouldn't have hurt the network.

John Musselman

"Matt Cowell" wrote in message
...
Alright - I am not sure if this would be the correct newsgroup - if not,
please point me in the right direction - thanks!

I have had a catastrophic power supply failure in my PC and I would like
to know if this type of scenario is uncommon and what exactly might of
happened to cause this.

I was moving my server from one location to another - it had been running
for about 2 months straight without any problems. I plugged it in and hit
the power button. There was a loud rattling noise from the power supply
for about 1 or 2 seconds, then I got smoke, a nasty smell, and a dead PSU.

I have had power supply's die before - I just replace them. On this one
however, the whole PC was dead. Motherboard, hard drive, cdrom, floppy,
everything. Also, the monitor that it was connected to was dead - no
picture at all, but the power light did come on, and the keyboard was also
dead. Fortunatly I did not have a network connection, because I fear I
may of toasted all of the other PC's on the network.

Has anyone else ever seen this or heard of it - it just seems too wierd!

Thanks in advance,

~ Matt