Brown Outs. What was damaged, and is anything else at risk?

[willtheoct]

Hi all.

I plugged my desktop and my laptop into a surge protector power bar, but no UPS. I'm getting a UPS as soon as I fix this.

What happened:
Both laptop and desktop were running while brown-outs happened. Could be electricians that were working on the power lines outside, or it was a 100 year old house with old wiring. The lights were dimming and there was an unknown amount of brown-outs.

The Problems:
-My mice aren't working much at all(all 3 of them, only one was plugged in at the time), and Ubuntu isn't telling me why, but in Windows, it reports that all of my USB ports have power surges. If I jiggle the USB plug into just the right spot, it will work, but moving it slightly causes more surges.

-This happens all the time now on both my desktop and laptop, even though I'm back to the good circuit, in a modern house.

-My laptop even does this when running on battery. Also does it without a battery.

-It applies to any USB device I plug in, including wifi adapters, or the 3 mice I have. The devices are powered by the USB ports.

-(probably unrelated) My laptop briefly showed an unusual amount of black "dead GPU" squares when running a game on the integrated GPU, in Linux. So it may not be related, but that may have been damaged. Nothing new with the dedicated GPU.

-Desktop performs fine(aside from USB surges). It did BSOD from a driver error in Windows, though that may be because it isn't handling the mouse properly during shut-offs from the "surges". Only happened once.


What I've tried:
-I tried leaving both devices off for extended periods of time, and holding the power buttons for a minute or so.
-Removing battery from laptop and using the outlet.
-Running laptop only on battery, no outlet.


My questions:
-What has been damaged? The power supply, the motherboard, both, or... worse?
-Can I leave my devices plugged in and running on the reliable circuit, without worrying about more damage being caused(by a damaged PSU for example)?

More Information

If I need to look around for some busted capacitors, I can do that, but I believe the problem is under-voltage, not a surge.

Also, the laptop is fine if it can't use USB devices. Minor setback, not worth repairing it. But, the info about the laptop was provided to help diagnose the desktop. All the same, if there is a free way to fix it, I'm all ears.

Power outlets are US/Canada 120V.

Desktop Specs:
Mobo: Z97X-SLI
PSU: Corsair CX750M

Laptop Specs:
Model: Toshiba Satellite P850
Battery: 6-Cell Li-Ion, DC 10.8V
Power brick, In: 100-240V ~ 50-60Hz 2.0A. Out: 19V 6.32A

 

[westom]

No brownout causes damage to properly designed electronics. Brownouts are problematic to motorized appliances. Your laptops already contain a UPS. If a brownout (or blackout) causes problems with them, then the standard UPS circuit inside that laptop is defective (or battery is dead or missing).

That assumes you had a brownout. Numerous other anomalies could exist. Any that might damage a laptop cannot be averted by a protector adjacent to the laptop. The most typically destructive (ie caused by lightning, lineman error, stray car) must be located at the service entrance with a low impedance (ie less than 3 meter) connection to single point earth ground. This paragraph explains how to avert future failures. Brownouts never cause electronics (computer or laptop) damage.

Brownouts are problematic to motorized appliances. That is why the utility must provide sufficient voltage or cut off power completely - to protect those other at risk appliances.

 

[willtheoct]

No brownout causes damage to properly designed electronics. Brownouts are problematic to motorized appliances. Your laptops already contain a UPS. If a brownout (or blackout) causes problems with them, then the standard UPS circuit inside that laptop is defective (or battery is dead or missing).

That assumes you had a brownout. Numerous other anomalies could exist. Any that might damage a laptop cannot be averted by a protector adjacent to the laptop. The most typically destructive (ie caused by lightning, lineman error, stray car) must be located at the service entrance with a low impedance (ie less than 3 meter) connection to single point earth ground. This paragraph explains how to avert future failures. Brownouts never cause electronics (computer or laptop) damage.

Brownouts are problematic to motorized appliances. That is why the utility must provide sufficient voltage or cut off power completely - to protect those other at risk appliances.

Thank you so much for your reply. Helped me reflect on how I was diagnosing the problem.

I was testing USB devices by having my normal mouse plugged in so I could control the PCs, and plugging in USB devices to check if they work. The mouse itself was causing the "USB power surge" message, and the PC turned off all USB ports and flagged all ports as having surges. After removing the problem mouse, all USB devices work completely fine.

I guess the mouse decided to fail around the time brown-outs occurred.

 

[westom]

I was testing USB devices by having my normal mouse plugged in so I could control the PCs, and plugging in USB devices to check if they work. The mouse itself was causing the "USB power surge" message, and the PC turned off all USB ports and flagged all ports as having surges.

Imagine if a sore finger, a hurt foot, or a painful eye were all called headaches. That is what the word 'surge' means. A surge can be a low current, a spike, a high voltage, dimming lights, a high current, or a low voltage. In your case, the mouse was drawing too much current from a USB port. So the equivalent of a circuit breaker tripped. That says nothing about the many other magic box solutions for the many other anomalies - all called surges.

If some device on a USB port draws too much current, then the USB port declares a surge; should cut off current to that USB port. No protector exists for this completely different anomaly called a surge.