PSU life expectancy / PC tried to self-destruct
polycounter lvl 8
So last night, in the middle of a game of TF2, my PC loses power suddenly, accompanied by the faint smell of singed electrical components. Subsequently, the power button was unresponsive.
While I was booting up my emergency browsing PC, there was a loud crackling buzz sound, complete with white sparks coming out of the back of my tower. It looked like the sparks were coming from the connection port of my graphics card, but it happened so quickly, I can't be 100% sure.
Now, I've blown out a fair few PSU's in my time, but I've never encountered the singed electrical smell, nor the sparks coming out of the tower. Would I be right in assuming it's the PSU at fault? Seems like I go through them once every six months or so, and I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary in terms of usage - I shut down every night, and the machine is usually running through the day using the usual suspects (Max, ZBrush, Photoshop, browsing and some gaming). The power outlets are also equipped with surge protectors, incidentally.
It's not really worth me replacing the entire machine what with me moving to the States in the next few months, but could this problem be anything other than the PSU? Has anyone else experienced similar kinds of issues that weren't the fault of the PSU?
Any insight would be appreciated - off to find a PC repair guy now, but it'd be nice to hear from anyone that might know if anything else is to blame.
As always, thanks in advance.
While I was booting up my emergency browsing PC, there was a loud crackling buzz sound, complete with white sparks coming out of the back of my tower. It looked like the sparks were coming from the connection port of my graphics card, but it happened so quickly, I can't be 100% sure.
Now, I've blown out a fair few PSU's in my time, but I've never encountered the singed electrical smell, nor the sparks coming out of the tower. Would I be right in assuming it's the PSU at fault? Seems like I go through them once every six months or so, and I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary in terms of usage - I shut down every night, and the machine is usually running through the day using the usual suspects (Max, ZBrush, Photoshop, browsing and some gaming). The power outlets are also equipped with surge protectors, incidentally.
It's not really worth me replacing the entire machine what with me moving to the States in the next few months, but could this problem be anything other than the PSU? Has anyone else experienced similar kinds of issues that weren't the fault of the PSU?
Any insight would be appreciated - off to find a PC repair guy now, but it'd be nice to hear from anyone that might know if anything else is to blame.
As always, thanks in advance.
Replies
Static can kill stuff in your pc, bad idea to place on a carpet. Or what about your chair, does that have some kind of cushion on it that generates static?
My PSU blew up once with sparks before in my uni halls room. The cause was the crappy carpet + my stupidity in deciding to install RAM while on said carpet without taking anti static measures
It was a useful lesson to learn though! And a pretty cool experience, never seen sparks come from a PSU before that.
As for general life expectancy, I know quite a lot of people who use PCs and none of them need to change it this often. My last PSU died after almost 3 years of usage, not sure what caused it but I got a free warranty replacement anyways.
I maintain my brother's and his partner's PCs and neither of them have had a PSU problem for over 5 years.
Sounds like the graphics drew too much power and overloaded the psu.
When your PSU blew, were the motherboard or hard drive affected?
EDIT: Calabi, that sounds like a possibility. I've got a 512mb NVidia 9500GT card installed, and the PSU was 230V (not sure of the brand) - I'm guessing I need to replace it with a more powerful power supply?
Yes, at uni when my PSU blew up, it fried the motherboard as well. I researched it a bit back then and it was apparently a common thing with crappy PSUs.
My hard drive was not affected, but I read that it can possibly kill the hard drive too.
PSUs blowing up can pretty much kill any component, but motherboards are the most likely.
How many watts is the PSU? You can use this calculator to figure out how many watts you need; http://www.antec.outervision.com/index.jsp
Well, the PSU was 230V. I could just about handle a fried motherboard, but if my HD is borked then I think I'm going to kill myself.
I've already lost a lot of stuff through another hard drive failure, and if this one's gone as well, I've lost all my tutorials (including some by Eat3D that they very kindly allowed me to re-download recently because of the other HD failure), reference images, textures - not to mention all my work files, including the entirety of the Captain Nemo's office scene files.
Again, due to me leaving the country, purchasing external drives for backup purposes wasn't really an option financially - so please, no 'I told you so' posts about adequate backup systems.
If, in the disastrous event that the HD was affected, would data recovery be a possibility?
/hoping
Throw your HD into your other system and see if it is ok, generally if it still works mechanically you should be able to recover it.
Edit; Yes, and a 230w PSU is likely too small, and also likely the culprit. I've had a few PSUs die on me, however generally they just stop turning on. One time i managed to fry a motherboard/PSU from either not grounding it well enough(making sure all the little screws were correct) or hooking it up incorrectly(i ordered the wrong 24 pin PSU converter, but got ansty and hooked it up anyway, as i read it would be "ok").
And sorry I've got zero experience with data recovery, and for my own sanity I hope it stays that way!
Hiren's Boot CD 10.5 has some great recovery tools.
Losing a PSU is pretty strange, in 12 systems (8 years) I've built, I've only had one PSU fail so loosing a PSU every few months is pretty odd, at least for me. Probably look into things like:
The wiring in your home, you might be drawing down too much and it starts to brown out or cause surges.
Airflow, not just in your tower but all around it.
It's probably time to start from scratch, focus on air flow and cooling and quality parts.
I think I'll try the drive in this machine to determine if it's still functional, and see how much it'll run me to get the primary system operational until I leave the country - at which point I'll just remove the hard drive and bring it with. I might invest in some additional Dropbox space to backup my work files until I can get something more permanent set up.
Thanks again, guys.
Yeah, I made sure to use power strips with surge protectors, so I'm guessing it's a combination of shoddy parts and inferior wattage.
Thanks again for everyone's input - here's hoping my drive survived!
Eq & Vig pointed out brown outs/wiring problems potential.
Triplite is what the company that manages our work servers uses. Most models come with voltage regulators/stabilizers to keep your psu getting the same voltage regardless of wiring/surge problems.
They're relatively inexpensive for what they do. I just picked the 500w 1000va model w/ led display, but it should take you to the search page. Thats the EU->UK model as well.
If you do buy a ups from triplite just make sure its wattage can support your v/a draw. They have a calculator to help you figure it out, but unless your running two servers and multiple monitors you probably wont need over a 1000v/a which is
~180eu for the led model and one I found thats non/led was ~35eu.
150eu for a led, hah f' that it they all have usb and monotoring software so you can pull it up on your PC.
Good luck with the data!
Currently Seasonic and Corsair make great PSU's in my opinion.
Always get a more powerful PSU than you need as they tend to lose wattage over time.
Also note if the wattage is rated as
'peak' - will run at that load from a few seconds to a few minutes before shutting down
or 'continuous'
If your PC uses 300w at full load then a 320w 'continuous' PSU would likely be fine for a while until it loses some output. Where as a 320w 'peak' PSU would likely be burning out a lot faster as it's 'continuous' rating it probably a lot lower than 300.
There is a great calculator here that can work out how much your PC uses after you enter the details. They suggests approx 10-20% wattage loss after a year or normal use.
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/
Couple other things to consider if you really want to dive in;
Number of Power Rails (avoid single rails if you can)
Efficiency rating
80 PLUS Certification's
There is some good info on anandtech; some PSU sticky threads here;
http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48
and
http://80plus.org/manu/psu/psu_join.aspx