[Fineus]

Hey guys, I've a question...and a bit of a story...

On Friday night my computer died. When I say died I mean I was happily playing BF1942 when it just turned off. Pushing the power button yielded a short spurt of power and then it turned off again... and didn't turn back on. The PSU was really hot so I left it for the night. The next day I tried again with a different cable, the PSU sparked and smoke came out... I turned it off again. The fuse had blown - luckily this was all it was but it was a huge power spike that caused it (I think). So I'm curious now, what precautions do you guys take against this kind of thing?

[DragonClaw]

Simple. I got a power supply backup that has its own surge protector and all sitting here right next to my computer. Protects it against power surges AND power outages  Very nice piece of equipment.

[IceFire]

Depends on what kind of surges your talking about.  My computer has no doubt sustained some damage from the rash of near constant power outages in my area about a year ago during the summer.  I've got a surge protector on it (a decent one - nothing special) and I've managed to survive most of it but I suspect that it did a number on the sound card I just replaced a couple of weeks ago.

The other possiblity is that your power supply was DONE (thats a technical term ).  It happens...they shoot sparks, they blast out smoke and they die.  The quicker you open your case up and clear the stench out and the quicker you get a new power supply the better.  HOPEFULLY, cross your fingers here, there has been no damage done to your internal components...if it was shooting sparks, hope that nothing has been damaged.

Eletrical shorts and the like can be very wacky on components.  Sometimes causing no damage and sometimes causing the entire system to get fried.

[Darkage]

Since i live in a old house i don't have surge protection on my wall plugs. what i did was to buy a plug board where you can put 3 extra things in but i use it with a fuse. Thats the best protection i can get. And i use a normal wire from my case to a water pipe in my room that is conected to the eart pin.

[an0n]

I don't get power surges. My wiring knows better than to start giving me ****.

[Carl]

Here is your best option:

[SKYNET-011]

[Stryke 9]

Turning the computer off during lightning storms. Trying to test-drive any EM tools I make at other peoples' houses.

[Whitelight]

Your computer isn`t the only thing at risk, also your modem can suffer from spikes... My phone modem was fried by a lightening strike.. Also a cable modem can suffer the same fate... I`ve got a surge protector that protects against all the above, expensive, but it works to my advantage..

[Stryke 9]

Modems are fairly cheap. Computers are not.

[Liberator]

The point is that your computer can fry just as easily on a phone line, so don't forget to unplug ALL the wires.

[Vertigo1]

I use an APC Back Office 500.  (not the giant brick kind, the flat ones)

Cost me $70 at the time (two years ago), but its saved my ass on a number of occasions so it was money well spent.  Plus, I've got a $25,000 warranty on anything connected to it!  If my comp croaks, I get new parts.  It even acts as a line filter! (got an extra 1.5k/sec on my download speeds because of it!)

[Carl]

pfft. just unplug everything. better than spending 70 bucks.

[Fineus]

That's my problem - to all extents there shouldn't have been a problem, no storm... fairly fair weather outside. This was due to unusual load on the power in my room, at least thats what I think it was...

[kode]

only thing I ever get are short voltage drops... I guess I should get some kind of protection against spikes tho... But why fix things when they aren't broken?

[Stryke 9]

Dude, there's no way you can have a surge in just one room, unless you're monkeying with the electrical system at the time. For one thing, pretty much any place built since, say, the 20s has a fusebox...

[Hunter]

Whats an unusual load to you Thunder might be pretty normal load for everyone else. It just shouldn't happen..

[kode]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
Dude, there's no way you can have a surge in just one room, unless you're monkeying with the electrical system at the time. For one thing, pretty much any place built since, say, the 20s has a fusebox...

fuses don't cut the power right away.

[Stryke 9]

They don't, but it's odd for it to be limited to one room anyway. And a millionth of a second generally isn't enough to bluesmoke a computer, since power spikes generally don't happen all at once, but kinda build up over a fraction of a second.

[J.F.K.]

I've never had any problem with power surges. Don't overload your powerpoints