Powersurge has caused issues with PSU or Motherboard. Need some guidance.

[doctorxerxes]

Hey all,

Bit of an odd problem. Would love to get any suggestions as to what to do. So Here goes.


Yesterday afternoon there was a power spike/surge in my apartment. My mother who was using the PC at the time called me and told me that the screen had "frozen" and nothing was responsive.

I told her to long press the power button and see if the PC would boot back up. It did so without any issue.

Now cut to later in the night , after i got back from my clinic , Im seeing no display signal . So i removed the displayport connecting the gpu and moved it to the inbuilt one. Still no signal. Keep in mind all fans and motherboard lights are working.

Next step, I use the DVI ports on both gpu and motherboard , but still no signal. Tried connecting the laptop to the monitor and the screen comes on , so I've figured its something pertaining with the PC and not the monitor.

I unplugged all the cables , disconnected the power supply and let the pc stay idle overnight. In the morning when i wake up , the issue still persists. At this time I also notice that the CAPS lock and num lock keys are not lighting up like they should.

So now I feel confident that the issue rests with the PSU but I would like your guys input in case I have missed something. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Specs are as follows:

i5 Haswell 4590
8 GB Corsair Vengeance (4gb x 2 Ram)
Asus H87 Pro Motherboard
GTX 780 GPU
Samsung 256gb EVO SSD

Ive checked the peripherals with the laptop and all seem to be working fine.

 

[guanyu210379]

Voltage spike (in both direction positive (overvoltage) or negative (blackout)) is special. Depending how it happened, almost everything within your PC can be already broken.
If you are lucky, only the PSU is broken.
If you are extremely lucky, only the fuse in the PSU is broken.

I experienced such spikes several times already within this lifetime and I got different broken components each time.
It is a bit hard to tell.

 

[doctorxerxes]

Voltage spike (in both direction positive (overvoltage) or negative (blackout)) is special. Depending how it happened, almost everything within your PC can be already broken.
If you are lucky, only the PSU is broken.
If you are extremely lucky, only the fuse in the PSU is broken.

I experienced such spikes several times already within this lifetime and I got different broken components each time.
It is a bit hard to tell.

Like I mentioned, there is power being delivered since the fans and mobo lights do come on. But I feel some of the rails in the psu may have taken a beating. Going to change the PSU and hope for the best. The GPU fans seem to be working as well.

The fact that its not booting at all is very worrying. Just lights and fan , nothing else.

 

[guanyu210379]

Like mentioned before, it can be anything in your PC that could die after a voltage spike.
Spinning fan does not mean that component is still working.

My dead components collection after a voltage spike so far:
- a PSU
- 2 mainboards
- 2 graphic cards
- a HDD
- one dial up internal modem

 

[doctorxerxes]

Like mentioned before, it can be anything in your PC that could die after a voltage spike.
Spinning fan does not mean that component is still working.

My dead components collection after a voltage spike so far:
- a PSU
- 2 mainboards
- 2 graphic cards
- a HDD
- one dial up internal modem

Ouch ! Another weird thing is that the PC rebooted normally after "freezing". If there was something wrong why would the issue manifest itself much later after a shutdown ? Any thoughts regarding that ?

 

[guanyu210379]

As one of the graphic cards I mentioned got a surge, it was actually still running until I rebooted.
After the reboot, the graphic card did not send anything to the monitor.
hahahaha...yes...ouch!

 

[doctorxerxes]

As one of the graphic cards I mentioned got a surge, it was actually still running until I rebooted.
After the reboot, the graphic card did not send anything to the monitor.
hahahaha...yes...ouch!

Oh man, that's terrible !

 

[guanyu210379]

After those broken stuffs, I decided to really invest on an UPS with all the needed protection equipped.
The electricity back home by me was simply bad. I learned my lessons, without a proper protection, I could replace a component once a month or even more frequently.

The protections:
Voltage regulator against voltage instability incl. over-voltage
Voltage spike protection especially the positive ones a.k.a. surges
Blackout protection is standard for all UPSs, I guess

 

[doctorxerxes]

After those broken stuffs, I decided to really invest on an UPS with all the needed protection equipped.
The electricity back home by me was simply bad. I learned my lessons, without a proper protection, I could replace a component once a month or even more frequently.

The protections:
Voltage regulator against voltage instability incl. over-voltage
Voltage spike protection especially the positive ones a.k.a. surges
Blackout protection is standard for all UPSs, I guess

Shall keep this in mind ! Thanks !