[SOLVED] Is touching the internals of a PSU really dangerous?

[Jacob 51]

I didn't know this before I watched Greg Salazar's video of cleaning a PC.
I used to clean my PSU every 3 months with a cloth and some isoprolyll by fully opening it. (The dust filter is useless).

It it really dangerous or I just got lucky? I touched at least all the capacitors, and the PSU was in use like an hour ago before cleaning it.

Is this because this PSU was just 450 watt and supplying 230 Watts to the system?

 

[MeanMachine41]

Hi Jacob

It's best to completely shutdown your system and unplug from the wall prior to cleaning. This is both for your safety and for your system.
Touching components inside the case can discharge static electricity and kill hardware.
It is never a good idea to open a PSU especially when plugged into the wall outlet. Even when not plugged into the wall there are capacitors inside the case that can shock you if touched and although not lethal can hurt.

 

[lvt]

I didn't know this before I watched Greg Salazar's video of cleaning a PC.
I used to clean my PSU every 3 months with a cloth and some isoprolyll by fully opening it. (The dust filter is useless).

It it really dangerous or I just got lucky? I touched at least all the capacitors, and the PSU was in use like an hour ago before cleaning it.

Is this because this PSU was just 450 watt and supplying 230 Watts to the system?

Yes it's dangerous, in some PSU the capacitors are out of juice in a couple of minutes, but in other they might hold a charge for half a day.

Next time, disconnect the PSU the nigh before you want to clean it.

 

[lvt]

BTW it's impossible to properly clean a PSU using cloth, you have to use a dust blower then a spray clean kit.

Moreover, cleaning the PSU alone doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

What you need to do is to clean the whole computer, repaste the CPU / GPU every 2 or 3 years.

 

[JWNoctis]

Personally I doubt there's much more benefit to be had, for any cleaning more than a good spray from a source of clean compressed air or equivalent and repasting the CPU and GPU, for environments with little contaminant other than dust and lint.

That is, unless you smoke or cook in your room, deeper cleaning probably won't do much good. And disassembling the PSU (or anything else that worked from mains electricity, for that matter) for such would be needlessly dangerous.

 

[Juular]

there are capacitors inside the case that can shock you if touched and although not lethal can hurt.

It can absolutely be lethal, a capacitor discharges between your hands across your heart, heart goes into fibrillation, you die. People have died opening up their PSUs, mostly kids tho.
Now to the topic of cleaning up the PSU, you really don't need to do that unless it really dusty, like it's completely covered in dust, and even then, just detach the cover and blow the dust away, without touching anything inside. If it's regularly dusty, just place it fan down on the table, give it a few good whacks and then dust it through the exhaust grille, make sure to immobilize it's fan tho, with a pen or smth. All that after the PSU was sitting without the power cord attached at least for 24 hours so the bleeding resistors would have time to discharge the main capacitor, if you absolutely need to open the PSU still, wearing class 00/0 insulating gloves would be definitely a plus.

 

[jonnyguru]

I actually had a PSU sit in a room for a whole week. Opened it up and touched the primary heatsink and got a tingle! Glad I didn't touch the legs of the bulk cap!