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Computers blown...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Saturday night while my computer was off although plugged into the mains it suddenly crackled, banged and flashed a blue light from the main base unit. There was a terrible burning smell and we immeadiately turned it off at the mains.
Ive called evesham and they cant come out till like tomurow or Wednesday...
Im just wondering what could have caused this as its got me really puzzled that it was off at the time ....
The burning smell really bothered me!
Any ideas?
Ive called evesham and they cant come out till like tomurow or Wednesday...
Im just wondering what could have caused this as its got me really puzzled that it was off at the time ....
The burning smell really bothered me!
Any ideas?
0
Comments
But yeah. Sounds like the PSU went in a big way.
Whats a PSU? Ive never heard of one of those.
All I will say is when it blew my boyfriends face and mine was sheer terror although I can now laugh at his cause he was such a wimp and wouldnt go near it!
It's just a box at the top of the computer, at the back. It provides the power for the rest of the components in the computer. You can buy one from any online computer shop, or maplin or something like that. And they're easy to fit too, just a couple of screws to take out. You'll have to redo your power connection inside too though, but if you just wire it up as it was before it should be ok.
(ETA: you don't need to actually rewire anything, just unplug stuff then plug it in again
Got conformation that evesham will be coming out too look at it on Friday as they think its the fan according to what they said....
FRIDAY!!! Im stuck on my mums laptop all week now
Computers suck when they dont work properly! Oh and they have said i might lose all the stuff I have on there!!!!
Fans don't fucking explode! What a load of BS tbqh. It's going to be PSU I think... Fan my arse. I love PC companies like that... when my HDD died in my old PC and the BIOS was fucked too (it just displayed coloured blobs onscreen as opposed to anything) Packard Bell world said it was the monitor. They replaced that, then the chap opened it up, reset BIOS and replaced HDD.
Oh well. Free new monitor, so I wasn't bitching.
You might, but it is higly doubtful you will. The PSU thankfully stores no data. If it had done it whislt on, maybe you would have lost something!
Have fun with the laptop btw
Also...(I'm gonna sound like an old man now)...try and back up your data if you're worried about losing it. I back up my important documents to a separate HDD (it's not an external one, although that would be the best option).
Aye... but let's face it, no one ever does!
I once got a bit paranoid for some reason and backed up all my documents....it took 13 DVDs and a lot of boredom!
That is mad! I could never back all my stuff up... it'd take too many DVD's!
Im going to be gutted if I lose all my pictures. I need them for my college interview which is coming up GRRRR! Luckily I dont have any important coursework on there. Normally I back uyp when i need to as i reguarly do get viruses somehow lol.
So the fans unlikely then?
You get viruses because I bet you havn't got a good firewall or antivirus! Goi and get some freeware, zonealarm, Sygate, Nod32 etc etc, just google for them.
Physical abuse and elecrtical damage are two very different things. 9G is absolutely sod-all compared to what I could do to your hard drive with 12v in the wrong place.
Exactly the same principle when a PSU goes bang - most of the time, all components survive and show no signs of damage. Most items will have their useful life shortened - though there is no real way to measure this.
If the PSU had a clean death, then chances are everything will be fine. However, depending on how it failed, it can do a hell of a lot of damage. If you end up getting 12v down the 5v rail, you could quite easily take out many components in the system. And on a similar note, it would take no time at all for 230v AC to trash everything inside the case.
If the PSU smells of piss(ammonia), then chances are one/many capacitor/s have gone. This will have likely produced a rather variable output voltage prior to the system going down.
No smell indicates the fuse has popped, or something else with (somewhat) limited consequences.
Obviously, the above is based on my experience. Talk to someone who repairs PSU's for a living and you'll get much better advice.
A lot of power cables come with 13 AMP fuse as standard cos it's the highest rated fuse when a lead used for a PC should be much lower - I'm guessing 3 AMP or 5 AMP
The UK electricity supply is also rubbish compared to what it used to be, we've had several 1 second power failures over the last few years, these can do a lot of damage.
And some where the power when off for 1 second, then on again for 1 second and back off again and even my UPS couldn't cope with that much on and off's happening so fast.
My only question now is that is it unusal for this to happen on a computer thats less than a year old? I only got it end of last june?!
No it's not, most pre-built PC's come with cheap parts... that's where these companies make a big profit. And when the service man comes around, he will stick another cheap part in. Potential for more damage.
These days I build systems myself, and i'd rather fork out £50+ on a decent reliable PSU that deliveres stable power on the rails. Someone here said before they had no problems buying a cheap PSU, they have done many times and had no problems... fair enough, it's your choice... but i'd rather have a piece of quality gear.
Products tend to fail in one of two ways:-
1. Very quickly - within the first month or two of use
2. After a long time - years
Of course, the general rule is that when something is made from decent quality components, it will last longer than a product made from crap. Failures can occur in anything, and at any time, but crap tends to fail more often than quality.
Quality doesn't have to cost a fortune.
The problem is... when producing PCs on a large scale, then saving £3 per computer by using the cheapest PSU components possible, rather than using something made a little more substantially - it equates into a large saving per year to the company. So long as it survives the warranty period, they don't care...
With smaller local shops, they rely heavily on word-of-mouth advertising. You tend to get better components, and whilst you pay a little more than you would for a factory-assembled machine of the same specification, you have a shop on your doorstep who don't want you coming back for the wrong reasons.
I've gone off-topic again. I'm off to bow my head in shame...
Trust me when I say, spending more on somethingl ike a quality PSU is worth it - I bought a cheap Ebuyer 500 watt ( still works, hasn't let me down much) but you notice the difference, I recently got a quality Hyper 480 watt one - so much more stable, and just is far better made.
Also, I invested in a surge protector for my plug socket the extension is in - top deivce! No surges get near my equipment... won't save me from the fucknig powercuts though. They piss me off, why can a country like ENGLAND not even provide stable power? There are probably old Soviet REpublics who can do better than us! Ffs, hurry up and build those new Nuclear Plants already, bastards.
Well... there are power cuts a fair bit here (well, its getting better now) because they shut down Bradwell Nuclear Powerplant... only getting power from Sisewell Nuclear Powerplant now... and it was entirley overstretched, but they've stabalised quite a bit. The lights still dim now and again though. Lame.
It was a bugger having power turn off halfway through a game.