So like the title says. My power supply on my less than one week old computer just died and leaked some stinky brown ooze onto my floor. On a scale of 1-10 how fucked are my other parts?
A little back story: I live in Nigeria, and I had some electricians working on my powerbox. I shut down my computer but I didn’t unplug it from the UPS. I came back to my desk after they finish up what they were doing and I notice a powerful smell. I try to turn on my computer and it won’t turn on. The power button lights for a fraction of a second and the case fans start up and then stop and startup and stop. Flip the switch on and on with no luck, move the case so I can look at the back and notice a tablespoon of brown ooze on the floor trickling out from the bottom of the powersupply (which thank god is located on the bottom of the case). Obviously, the powersupply is dead, but now I am worried that I have 1500 dollars of new PC parts that just died with it. Nothing really looks burned. There is still a faint smell in the case after I removed the PSU but I don’t know if that is lingering odor from the burn or it it means the components are dead.
Also maybe noteworthy: I unplugged the UPS it was plugged into and got a shock from it when I accidentally touched the part that plugs into the wall earlier that day. I don’t know if that would have any effect.
What do you think? Am I fucked? I’d go out and get a new PSU, but like I said, I’m in Nigeria and the only ones that are readily available are cheap HP knockoffs. I’ve already ordered another PSU that I can get to me in like 2-3 weeks, but that is going to be 2-3 weeks of uncertainty.
brown shit probably means capacitor liquid leaked?
If it’s all over the components you probably have to clean that stuff off… and then dry very very thoroughly. Fortunately in Nigeria I expect it to dry relatively quickly.
I know one week in the sun may not be enough to dry stuff off in East USA.
The only thing I can think of that would leak out of the PSU would be stuff from blown capacitors… although it sounds like more goo than I’d expect. I’ve only seen fairly small blown capacitors on a motherboard though. I suspect the PSU has larger ones, with more goo.
If it leaked outside the machine, I’d suspect that replacing the PSU would solve the problem. I would not expect that other parts of the board got damaged.
Most likely, the capacitor itself was just defective… although touching the plug from the UPS really should not have shocked you. That’s kind of a troubling sign, I think. The UPS could potentially be causing some issue with the computer, although I’m not sure exactly how it would result in that kind of effect.
Yea I’m replacing the UPS. I need a UPS because we change between grid power and generator on average maybe 5-10 times a day. Everything electric is backed by a ups basically.
Encouraging to hear that you guys don’t think anything else is dead. Going to try to test the motherboard on someone’s PSY soon hopefully.
Update, a repair man repaired the power supply and everything is working but the system reboots itself whenever witcher 3 loads up. I have a new power supply coming in a few weeks so I guess I’m on a hold with the witcher until then.
At this point I’m assuming the problem is the power supply can’t push out the power needed with its Nigerian repair job. I figure if the video card was damaged it wouldn’t work at all. Dota runs with no issues.
That’s not necessarily true, sometimes hardware that has some damage exhibits problems when it’s really pushed, as opposed to working lightly. I certainly don’t know in your case, though, just something to think about.
You’re a braver man than me using the repaired power supply, but I’ve never been working out of Nigeria and been a few weeks away from a replacement!
Okay, so it turns out the the fans on the card only spin at boot up. Very strange. I moved it to a new PCI-E slot and had a little more success, the fans wouldn’t spin with DOTA but did spin with Witcher 3 for about 20 seconds before the system rebooted itself again. I’ll test it with the new power supply when I get it to see if it is a power issue. If that fails I’ll bring the card back with me this summer when I am back in the states and get it RMAed.
Does this sound like a card issue, a power issue or a motherboard issue to you guys? Everything is working fine other than the reboot when I load up the witcher (which is the only intensive game I have right now.)
EDIT: Downloaded afterburner and force the fans to spin at 100% and everything stayed cool and the fans were spinning, booted witcher up again and it had a hard reboot, so the hard reboot has nothing to do with GPU temps. Pretty sure its just the power supply struggling.
I think you’re right – it’s the power supply. The fans on the graphics card will spin up as necessary to cool the card. It sounds like as the card draws more power (and gets hotter) the power supply is struggling and fails, causing your hard reset.
As an aside, I think it’s both terrifying and amazing that you would get a power supply fixed. Terrifying, because holy cow if it craps out again it could fuck your whole system. Amazing, because in the developed world we’ve become such a consumer culture that if something fails, we don’t repair it, we replace it. A few years ago I my furnace crapped out, and the repair guy came out and recommended I replace it (to the tune of $8,000 later). A few hours of research and a $200 part later, I fixed it myself. Weirdly, I felt good about that, although I suppose it’s possible the furnace could blow up and burn down my house, and at the same time I’m nervous for your computer.
Anyway, best of luck, and hopefully the new power supply (once it arrives off the slow boat) solves your problems!
Don’t PSUs have, essentially, breakers in them which pop before they have a chance to screw up your system? (just guessing).
On a side note…I know that smell of a burnt PSU so well. I still remember coming home (maybe 10+ years ago) and going “What’s that smell?”…then finding out my PC was down.
I’m curious as to what the repairman actually DID to the PSU.
Based on the description of the problem, it sounded like the capacitors suffered a catastrophic failure, and burst. I suppose that you could, in theory, replace the capacitors… although on some level I tend to think that doing so would cost more than the price of a new unit. But, as other’s have said, I live in a place where I can just go buy a new PSU today, or have Amazon send me one tomorrow, pretty trivially.
Normally, I’d say not to use a repaired PSU at all, due to potential danger. But given you’re in Nigeria, I dunno.
So got the new power supply put in today and I’m happy to report all is well. Put in an hour and a half of witcher 3 with no issues other than forgetting how to do everything, what quest I was on, combat, etc.
