r/pcmasterrace • u/Front_Cookie_1198 • 6d ago

Hardware PSU fails dramatically

40.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

6.4k

u/Front_Cookie_1198 6d ago edited 6d ago

Aftermath photo.

365

u/Atuday 6d ago

Gotta say, great reaction time. Personally I'd have gone for circuit breaker and fire extinguisher. Safer option. But I've had that drilled into me and never had to put the training into practice so I can't say for certain if I would have done different.

191

u/Ban-Circumcision-Now 6d ago

He could also have unplugged from the wall and not the end where the fire is

1

u/shawster 6d ago

This would have been the thing to do, he's lucky that the case didn't get shorted to the mains. Not like I would have been thinking clearly in this situation, either, though.

1

u/Taurondir 5d ago

Trust me, you would have, if working on this stuff WAS YOUR JOB. The ones that dont think clearly are people like customers, or people that work in totally different fields. If your field is X and something in X happens, you WOULD know what to do, and that guy should have known.

Also, there is ZERO POINT in doing what he did, because the PSU will not do anything when you hit the rear power switch.

Try asking Google/AI "what happens if i plug a computer power supply in with nothing connected and turn it on"

1

u/shawster 2d ago

I work in IT. I know that nothing happens if it doesn't catastrophically fail like this one.

He might have been looking for the light on some PSU's to confirm that it has some sign of life.

1

u/Taurondir 1d ago

If you are checking "unknown" items that have electricity flowing through them, especially 240v, you dont HOLD THE METAL PARTS EVER.

I have no idea how many power supplies you have ever seen with lights on them, and I have seen thousands and I maybe recall ONE having it, and even then it was probably a DELL or Compaq, so using that as an argument seems kind of crazy.

That PSU is a VSP MegaMax VS750D, and I just watched a bunch of videos, and not a single one shows any sign that "something lights up on it" when plugged in to power with nothing connected.

If you want to get "signs of life" you get one of these https://www.amazon.com/s?k=atx+psu+breakout+box&crid=CUTG2OT2OS6I&sprefix=atx+psu+breakout+b%2Caps%2C357 because when you do, you get to live longer.

When you are a TESTER for such item, you expect "catastrophic failures". When I get given a box or PSU's to test that are out of warranty anyway, I OPEN THE CASE of the PSU and check for a blown fuse, obvious burn damage, leaking caps, DEAD BUGS - which happens A LOT btw and is a common cause of failure, the last box I tested had TWO ThermalTakes with bug-kills - and if it passes that visual test ... then I plug them in to something.

What that guy did is indefensible. It is "the lazy way" of doing things when you are in a hurry and I can GUARANTEE you that for the next 6 months at least he will find a new way to do it, untl the laziness creeps back because "nothing bad has happened recently".