Roach Problems please help!

[Konstantinos Koutse]

hello guys in my house little roaches started appearing not the big ones but the small ones my house is clean me and my wife clean it up 2-3 times a month and the roaches come form our neighboor who is dirty and wont do anything from all the compalints weve gathered any ways im very stressed cause i have my pc in my living room and i fear roaches can damage it can they? what can ido to stop that? i clean my pc once a month from dust and such and every 3 months i clean my paste (thermal compound) sorry for bad english

 

[faalin]

Is this an apartment where your buildings touch one another or is it more of a neighbor hood where there is a yard between the two houses?


Unless you can prove they are coming from them the best you can do is call a specialist to come in and spray to kill them.

 

[InvalidError]

Good thermal paste does not need to be changed, it will get the job done for 10+ years.

As for potential damage to your PC, the roaches themselves are probably not conductive enough to cause issues at least until they decompose and ooze over power or sensitive signal traces. There is also the possibility of bridging connections inside the power supplies and applying AC mains voltage to outputs.

There isn't much you can do about your neighbor aside from complaining to the relevant authorities and your landlord if you are renting.

 

[Konstantinos Koutse]

actualy it is them because even upstairs people have compaints about roaches and downstrair floors too and when i got to their house it was smelling so bad i wanted to puke

 

[blazorthon]

If you're worried about it, you could try spraying indoors bug repellent around the computer. You could spray every possible entrance to the home while you're at it 🙁

 

[Konstantinos Koutse]

but is it too common for roaches to damage pcs? can it damage my mobo and cpu and card? about the psu they cant get inside

 

[blazorthon]

I've never heard of PCs getting damaged by roaches, but I've never had a PC full of them either. If they get stuck in the cooling fans, then it would certainly be a problem.

Don't underestimate what roaches can or can't get into. They can fit through holes considerably smaller than they are when they're determined.

 

[JobCreator]

Perhaps... you're the one with the roaches?

 

[InvalidError]

I've never heard of PCs getting damaged by roaches

I haven't tested this but I am still fairly confident that a roach has a lower isolation breakdown voltage than the ~400V present across the output of a modern PSU's PFC stage. Imagine if a roach bridged 400V PFC-rectified mains to the 12V rail. Roach goes boom. Unless the roach had enough DC resistance to limit current to something the system could sink, most stuff on the 12V rail is also gone.

 

[blazorthon]

I haven't tested this but I am still fairly confident that a roach has a lower isolation breakdown voltage than the ~400V present across the output of a modern PSU's PFC stage. Imagine if a roach bridged 400V PFC-rectified mains to the 12V rail. Roach goes boom. Unless the roach had enough DC resistance to limit current to something the system could sink, most stuff on the 12V rail is also gone.

Well, now I kinda want to test this and see what happens. Ok, I really want to see what happens. Do you think a local McDonald's will let me borrow some roaches?

Joking aside, I'm not sure the roach in question would be likely to significantly damage things on the 12V line. It would likely be just one leg bridging the connection and the leg might be burned up and moved away from the 12V line before the components on it are killed. Either way, it's best to try to not let roaches get inside the computer to start with.

 

[faalin]

Sounds like your in an apartment complex, I would keep calling the complex office and complaining, sounds like your neighbors are doing it as well. If nothing is changing find out what the board of health's number is and call them.

 

[InvalidError]

It would likely be just one leg bridging the connection and the leg might be burned up and moved away from the 12V line before the components on it are killed.

Assuming I am right about the legs effectively bridging the gap and initiating a breakdown through the roach, what happens to the roach's leg(s) when 50 amps (~8 ohms DC resistance after initial high voltage ionization) flow through it/them? Plasma. Plasma can easily carry the 500 amps the primary storage caps might be able to deliver the rest of the way with a ~100V voltage drop across the arc - that's where my expectation of "roach goes boom" came from, though I'm not certain 400V would be enough to achieve this result.

A 400V 470uF cap dumping its charge across a 100V arc (roach) would be about 30J worth of energy, about the same as dropping a 1kg (2.2lbs) brick on your toe from 3m (~10'). Splat, unless you have a steel caps.

 

[faalin]

It would likely be just one leg bridging the connection and the leg might be burned up and moved away from the 12V line before the components on it are killed.

Assuming I am right about the legs effectively bridging the gap and initiating a breakdown through the roach, what happens to the roach's leg(s) when 50 amps (~8 ohms DC resistance after initial high voltage ionization) flow through it/them? Plasma. Plasma can easily carry the 500 amps the primary storage caps might be able to deliver the rest of the way with a ~100V voltage drop across the arc - that's where my expectation of "roach goes boom" came from, though I'm not certain 400V would be enough to achieve this result.

A 400V 470uF cap dumping its charge across a 100V arc (roach) would be about 30J worth of energy, about the same as dropping a 1kg (2.2lbs) brick on your toe from 3m (~10'). Splat, unless you have a steel caps.

Question..... where are you getting 400v 470uF cap at in a computer. Once power leaves the PSU its 12, 7, & 5V DC. The biggest cap ive seen on a Motherboard was 16v 1000uF

 

[InvalidError]

Question..... where are you getting 400v 470uF cap at in a computer. Once power leaves the PSU its 12, 7, & 5V DC. The biggest cap ive seen on a Motherboard was 16v 1000uF

Does your power supply have a "No roach-serviceable parts inside" sticker? Would the roaches care even if it did? My hypothetical scenario is a roach bridging the gap between ~400V primary cap to 12V output rail, such as by crawling under one of the transformers, bridging the 400V PFC node on the primary side to one of the outputs on the secondary.

 

[blazorthon]

Question..... where are you getting 400v 470uF cap at in a computer. Once power leaves the PSU its 12, 7, & 5V DC. The biggest cap ive seen on a Motherboard was 16v 1000uF

You get 400V inside the PSU. The PSU converts the input to 400V before converting down to the lower DC voltages.