Hardware & Technical EVGA 1200W premium PSU exploded!

lysan

lysan
Well as the headline says, my PSU 1200W kind of exploded, maybe not exploded like in big boom and nothing left, but when I turned it on there was a loud SPARK sound and some fire out of the back from it. :eek:

Now I called EVGA and they got super service at CS, so no problems with RMA. My big question, are there other parts of my PC that got hit by this, or is it safe to say it's just the PSU?

The PC has been 100% off for some weeks, I pulled the plug, and only when I inserted the power cable and turned on the psu (not the PC) it got this little problem???

I purchased a new 850W EVGA PSU so I can get going fast again, because it will take some time to get my old one repaired, but I would like to know if there are anything I can do to make sure it not something else that causes this.
 

FoxTwo

FoxTwo
It is unlikely, but the chance is not 0%, that the system board was affected.

You can try to visually inspect the motherboard to see if there's any burn marks/soot or whether you smell any burnt-smell. And then you can run some stress-test diagnostics for an hour or so just to be sure.
 

Bunkerkind Anni

Bunkerkind Anni
a relative once connected one of the power lines from the PSU to the sound in of his CD-Drive.

he asked me if its bad if there was smoke and plastic dropping from that glowing cable :D

at least it was just the PSU and the CD-drive damaged.

in your case, you may be lucky - i would run a hardware test afterwards
 

lysan

lysan
The funny thing is that i didn't change anything, just unpluged, traveled for some time and when I returned I pluged it in again.
But I only turned the PSU on, not my PC. But I can't see anything on the MOBO or anything else.
 

shadragon

shadragon
PS are designed to fail safely. That is if something goes bad the power it turned off ASAP. FoxTwo nailed it. It is unlikely, but anything is possible. I saw my 1000w PS blue spark itself into death through my glass side door. I just replaced it and carried on.

Could be worse, lightning strikes have cost me a lot of gear.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
shadragon said:
PS are designed to fail safely. That is if something goes bad the power it turned off ASAP.
Click to expand...

Well-designed and standards compliant PSU's are :D

Some of the cheapies I've seen over the years were so badly designed or specced, or made from obviously rejected or pulled components, that the only reasonable thing to do with them was put them straight into electrical scrap.

Some off-brand PSU's are simply genuinely dangerous.
 

Aasgard

Aasgard
as long as the PSU was earthed then any residual current should have gone to ground properly and there should be no lasting damage.
problems tend to occur if it wasn't grounded properly, or the wall socket wasn't grounded.
 

lysan

lysan
Aasgard said:
as long as the PSU was earthed then any residual current should have gone to ground properly and there should be no lasting damage.
problems tend to occur if it wasn't grounded properly, or the wall socket wasn't grounded.
Click to expand...

No ground sadly, but EVGA has giving me a RMA code, so that is great news. I got a 10 year limited warranty on this puppy :D
Purchased a new PSU just so I could get back in business, EVGA 850W full modular platinum graded. So should be back in a day or 2.
 

shadragon

shadragon
Asp Explorer said:
Well-designed and standards compliant PSU's are :D
Click to expand...
True dat.

We bought several brand new Dell Optiplex 7040's (I do not recommend them). Six PS's went *poof* in a row all in different machines. The replacements (under warranty) all had "A" appended on the end of the model number. No issues with the replacements.
 

Lucius-Darcia

Lucius-Darcia
Lysander lysan said:
Well as the headline says, my PSU 1200W kind of exploded, maybe not exploded like in big boom and nothing left, but when I turned it on there was a loud SPARK sound and some fire out of the back from it. :eek:

Now I called EVGA and they got super service at CS, so no problems with RMA. My big question, are there other parts of my PC that got hit by this, or is it safe to say it's just the PSU?

The PC has been 100% off for some weeks, I pulled the plug, and only when I inserted the power cable and turned on the psu (not the PC) it got this little problem???

I purchased a new 850W EVGA PSU so I can get going fast again, because it will take some time to get my old one repaired, but I would like to know if there are anything I can do to make sure it not something else that causes this.
Click to expand...

I had such an issue two years ago and my graphics card did never worked that well as before. She was not broken but it felt that she brought only around 60% of the performance as before and lots of fps drops.
There were a sort of short screen freezes every 15 seconds, i was even able to see them visually during the benchmark tests but the benchmark results themselves were absolutly fine :|
I've never figured which component was affected, half a year ago i replaced them all due to upgrades.
 

lysan

lysan
Lucius-Darcia said:
I had such an issue two years ago and my graphics card did never worked that well as before. She was not broken but it felt that she brought only around 60% of the performance as before and lots of fps drops.
There were a sort of short screen freezes every 15 seconds, i was even able to see them visually during the benchmark tests but the benchmark results themselves were absolutly fine :|
I've never figured which component was affected, half a year ago i replaced them all due to upgrades.
Click to expand...

Well that can be checked, if any issues I will RMA that too, but I don't see why any other component s should be effected, as the PC was not turned on, only the PSU was involved.
 

FoxTwo

FoxTwo
Lysander lysan said:
Well that can be checked, if any issues I will RMA that too, but I don't see why any other component s should be effected, as the PC was not turned on, only the PSU was involved.
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Yup, other components shouldn't be affected, by right... but you never know. Just run some tests to make sure.

The moment you turn the PSU on, current is already flowing to the system board, FYI. It's just the BIOS and circuits on the board that tell the system board whether to power up the display, sound, network etc etc. In many cases, network is already powered at the minimum, even if the PC is "off". It's for the "Wake-On-LAN" (or
"WOL") feature. Most people never turn that off.

Unless of course, you have physically disconnected the cables from the PSU going to the system board before turning the PSU on.. then you can conclusively say that ONLY the PSU failed...

Don't worry yourself too much about it though. Normally nothing else SHOULD be affected.
 
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lysan

lysan
FoxTwo said:
Yup, other components shouldn't be affected, by right... but you never know. Just run some tests to make sure.

The moment you turn the PSU on, current is already flowing to the system board, FYI. It's just the BIOS and circuits on the board that tell the system board whether to power up the display, sound, network etc etc. In many cases, network is already powered at the minimum, even if the PC is "off". It's for the "Wake-On-LAN" (or
"WOL") feature. Most people never turn that off.

Unless of course, you have physically disconnected the cables from the PSU going to the system board before turning the PSU on.. then you can conclusively say that ONLY the PSU failed...

Don't worry yourself too much about it though. Normally nothing else SHOULD be affected.
Click to expand...

Cable was off, as in not connected to the PSU, but yeah I will not worry too much, the new PSU will arrive tomorrow then I will know for sure :)
 

VR StarLightPL

VR StarLightPL
No ground? Bad Lysander, bad! :D

Don't worry, you'd had to be extremely unlucky to get anything else burned. Which leads me to another question - how well do you fare with rngineers mat grind and rolls? :D

ps: update us asap ;-)
 

Tuub t Tute

T
Wasn't an accidental case of "reaching round the back of the system to stick the power cord back in and brushing it against the voltage selector?" The difference between 110 and 230 is a sight to behold...
 

lysan

lysan
StarLightPL said:
No ground? Bad Lysander, bad! :D

Don't worry, you'd had to be extremely unlucky to get anything else burned. Which leads me to another question - how well do you fare with rngineers mat grind and rolls? :D

ps: update us asap ;-)
Click to expand...

Haven't been playing ED for several month, I guess that answer your question ;)

The "press (J) to jump did it for me, I was losing my sanity slowly and that is not good.

Will keep you updated....

Tuub t Tute said:
Wasn't an accidental case of "reaching round the back of the system to stick the power cord back in and brushing it against the voltage selector?" The difference between 110 and 230 is a sight to behold...
Click to expand...


There are only a ECO and "normal" switch on it.
 
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