Who's had catastrophic power supply failures?

[DrakeTechno]

I had a first today (a first in my many, many, many years of working in the IT area). I moved a machine from a second floor room in my house down to a first floor room... a machine that has had three good years of service. When I plugged the power cord in again, the ATX power supply came on (not typical of this machine)... after a brief moment it went off again (presumably because it was in a dead short at this point), and shortly thereafter, a huge pop/spark, and the magic smoke began pouring out. By itself (although surprising), this isn't terribly unusual (cheap power supplies inevitably fail). What was alarming to me was that the motherboard survived (or appears to have survived), but the drives were both destroyed (my trusty Plextor 8x burner, and a Western Digital 40GB hard drive are both dead as a door nail). I'm trying to decipher exactly what could have failed (presumably in the power supply) that would burn up the drives and not the motherboard...
Anyone with similar experiences?

 

[Ravenit]

Went to a lan part once and a friends powersupply went bang. We suspect it was moisture in the power supply
due to humidity going from a hot humid day into airconditioning. Must have tracked over took out the earth leackage circuit breaker everything else on his pc was ok though. 2 year old power supply.

 

[johnjkr1]

Middle of the night, computer was off. All I heard was POP POP POP, and saw some really bright lightening looking sparks....then smoke.....very strange, but it only killed the power supply.

 

[thatbox]

I was watching Spirited Away and my cheap-o PS just ... quit. No smoke, no show, no fizzle ... just silence.

It wasn't catastrophic, but it was inconvenient. I'm now running a TruePower.

 

[CZroe]

Had an Enermax fry today. PC was stopping on the video card's BIOS each time I booted. After removing every component and trying again each time, it finally wouldn't turn on. The power LED and PSU would come on, but the CPU fan remained off each time the power button was pressed (And the PSU switch was required to return it from this state). I didn't smell ozone until I tried it in another computer.

Yeap, it's fire.

My trusty Asus P2B was fried by PSU failure a long time ago. A 1u (Slim rackmount) PSU fried one of two CPUs on my Abit BP6 and the motherboard's stability hasn't been the same since.

 

[Jeff7]

I've had two PSU failures, neither catastrophic, but both still killed the power supplies.
One was an L&C brand 300W power supply, which couldn't power a 1GHz Tbird @ 1.4GHz, along with a few hard drives and a power-hungry videocard. Loud snap, and it all shut down - 1/2 watt resistor inside of it exploded and toasted the PCB nearby. Nothing else was damaged.
Next one was a 430W Antec Truepower - something inside it made a loud snap, and its fans stopped spinning, but the system was still running like nothing had happened. RMA'd it under warranty. ~2.5 weeks after sending it in (I shipped Priority, they used UPS ground.

Takes over a week to get something across the country.) I got a replacement, which has been working fine ever since, which has been maybe 8 months now.

 

[EngenZerO]

I had a PSU actually catch on fire. It was crazy. It melted my case...

 

[OJ]

I had a brand new Antec 303 power supply from CompUsa go bad the first time I plugged it in,

Fried the motherboard, processor and Video card

Compusa replaced only the power supply.

 

[Texun]

May be a bit OT here since this wasn't a power supply, but I have a CMOS battery explode once, it was one of those barrel types that you used to find on cheap 486 boards. The PC was on.... nothing happening. I was watching TV when I heard what sounded exactly like a .22 caliber rifle shot in my PC. I couldn't see any sign of what caused the bang, the PC kept running, but when I started it the next day it came up with an empty BIOS. All settings were gone. Opened the case and there as no sign of the battery or any remnants. Nothing but a black spot and two bent ( \ / ) pins sticking up out of the board. I replaced the battery but the PC was never the same.

 

[Bonesdad]

I just had one go last night. I think it took the mobo, maybe proc and vid. But my WD 40GB was OK. 3 year old PSU and 3 year old K7S5A.

 

[Afro000Dude]

I had one catch fire. PC wouldn't turn on after repeatedly pressing the power button, and I noticed there was some flickering light on the wall behind the computer. I ripped the plug out of the back and tried to blow it out through the fan. Took out two hard drives and a cdrom. Motherboard and cpu were fine (I think - haven't used them since then)

 

[Yossarian]

this thread is freakin me out. I don't want my PSU to burn my house down!!!

 

[blodhi74]

after installing 9700PRO a few months ago, started having random reboots ...eventually a cople of days later the generic 300W PSU gave a burning smell ....checked the PSU and one of the fans had quit working..... replaced it before it would had blown up or casued any more damage

 

[DrakeTechno]

Yeah... it's a little concerning when you think about it. ATX power supplies are live all the time (unlike the old AT style which had a physical switch). The same can be said about any appliance that has a standby mode... TVs, VCRs, monitors, etc. Pretty much any current appliance realistically has the potential of starting a fire at any time.
What really chapped me about my power supply was the fact that the internal fuse never blew... it is rated as a 5 amp, but it looked a lot beafier than that (it has a pretty thick wire for a lousy 5 amp rating). Side note: made in China (as most things are these days).

-drake

 

[Finnkc]

Had a cheapo PS go on me once and it took my mobo with it ... never will I buy a PS that isn't a name brand.

 

[stranger707]

I have never had a power supply failure in the 22 systems that I have built over the past 10 years. I have seen a few failures in some friends systems, but each of them were not using Surge protectors for their computers.

 

[redbeard1]

If you listen close, all ATX power supplies actually throw a small spark or surge when you plug them in.

I had two power supplies do the almost the exact same thing to me. One of them just died a smokey death. The other time it took out 3 hard drives, a zip drive, and a cdrom when I plugged it back in. Put a new power supply in and that system is still running today. Part of it was that the power supplies were both from very cheap cases. The other thing was that they were in a smokers house that was also very dusty. Since an ATX power supply is always on, when I plugged it back in, that momentary surge of current threw a spark across all of the built up dust, and burned it up. After that, when I'm getting ready to plug a power supply in, if it has the power switch on the back, I turn that off before I plug the power cable back in.

 

[Excelsior]

I use Antec only, when I can. Never a problem. I actually have an A-Open on my second machine cause I got it for a good deal. It is very quiet and so far reliable.

 

[WackyDan]

Never a PSU failure here... ever...

My question for all of you that have lost a supply......

Did you have a QUALITY surge suppressor and perhaps a line conditioner feeding the PSU???? Seriously - that's a big question.

And I don't mean $7.95 Quality... I'm talking Expensive.

Secondly.....If you did have a Quality surge suppressor, how old was the Suppressor when the PSU Blew....

Both important questions...

That Suppressor that you've had for 3+ years isn't worth a hoot anymore.......They only take so much before they start passing those spikes on through to the PSU as if the surge suppressor wasn't even there....

 

[p1800volvo]

Just last night! Plugged it into the power cable and ZAP! Went to turn on the PC and nothing... I just ordered an SPI 250 a few minutes ago from New Egg. $16. Running an AMD K6-2 550.

 

[Futher]

I did... I was watercooling my computer, a pipe burst out into my powersupply. Let it dry for a few days and made sure there was no more water. Turned it on, ran fine for about 20 seconds... then it started to spark proceeded by an enormous bang and blank dust all over the wall. Needless to say it was dead, but luckily it didn't take anything else with it.

 

[OverVolt]

Yea PSU's catching on fire at my house since i leave my comps on 24/7 is always a concern for me. even though i have all antec PSU's on APC UPS's, all less than 1/yo old.

 

[Maggotry]

I had an Antec ps blow a few months ago. I was playing a game, then heard a loud pop. For a brief moment I thought it was something in the game exploding. I quickly realized the monitor was black and something far more sinister had happened. The Antec had blown. It took my mobo and even my usb mouse out with it. The 20-pin atx power cable melted to the mobo socket. It wasn't pretty.

As a little side story here, I took the now dead mobo to Directron and they RMA'd it to MSI for me. MSI sent me a brand new mobo, which they didn't have to do because it was clearly not the mobo's fault. Great service/support from Directron and MSI.

 

[imported_Phil]

Yeah I've had three or four go on me at work.
One was an old Dell XPS tower- the guy was trying to wrangle parts out of us. Basically, he'd "imported" the POS from the USA, and apparently told the guy who was booking it in that the power supply voltage was still set to 110v. Of course, he didn't, as the guy who was booking it in is very trustworthy and wouldn't miss something like that. Having said that, wouldn't you switch it over to 230v just in case before you brought the machine in to us?

Anyway. Plugged the machine in, forgot to check the switch at the back, hit the power switch. BANG! I went backwards at a high rate of knots, smoke started pouring out of the back of the machine. Someone hit the Emergency Kill button on the wall, and from them on, I refused point-blank to touch the machine . The PSU was non-standard, so we ended up paying for Dell to ship us a replacement. However, we then found out that the RAM (RDRAM) was faulty because we have nothing to test it on, and so we had to order that too. Then the video card died.
Eventually he cut his losses, returned the parts to Dell and bought a new machine. Thing is, he would lie about the whole thing to other people, but would accept what I was telling him on the phone. Strange guy.

The other two or three were PSUs that were fixed on 230v. Plug them in, bang, pop, there go the circuit breakers. Cue a cigarette break and a few minutes of shaky hands while I debated whether or not to touch the machine

Sometimes, it just happens. However, I've learnt to plug machines in without the power being on, and to check the voltage setting. Also, I turn them on by being a few feet away, and nervously hitting the power switch for the mains supply.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Had a generic 250Watt go down and take a SocketA mobo with it(surge protected)- charred the ATX power connector on the mobo but everything else in the rig survived. Really odd that your drives bit it but your mobo took the hit Drake, I think that's the first time I've heard of that.