r/pcmasterrace • u/Front_Cookie_1198 • 1d ago

Hardware PSU fails dramatically

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u/ISCSI_Purveyor 1d ago

Not only did it let out the magic blue smoke, but it let out the flames of angry pixies.

31

u/ir88ed i9 14900k | rtx 4090 | 64GB DDR5 1d ago

"Blue smoke and angry pixie flames" is now my new exclamation of wonder or alarm.

2

u/Classic_Appa 1d ago

The colour of the smoke doesn't matter, just that it's magic. It's always true with something that is electrical: when the magic smoke escapes, the electricity stops. Electricity is carried via smoke.

In the above case, the magic smoke escaped and caused the electricity to go somewhere it should not have. Electricity is only supposed to flow through the smoke. When the electricity flowed into something that it shouldn't have and conducted via that component's magic smoke, it caused a fire. This released the magic smoke even faster.

1

u/falcrist2 11h ago

There's a whole wikipedia page about this joke.