Houses power was being messed with. PC now broke.

[Coldkilla]

We lost power to the house the other night and it broke a fuse. My PC was on that circuit and now its fried or something. The Video Card and main OS Hard Drive no longer work when installed on my other (working) PC and I'm now without a PC.

Could a surge really have caused only these two parts to fail? Also, the surge protector never beeped, broke, or anything. Anything thats plugged to the Surge Protector still runs fine. Could anyone explain to me how or what could have potentially happened? The power may have went out more than once but I'm not sure if that accounts for anything.

I'd like to have at least one reason as to what possibly caused it.. even if its not definitive. I'll be finding the surge protector's company phone number and see if I can recover any damages but I'm doubtful as the thing still works fine.

 

[somethingsketchy]

If the current dropped enough (from say 120volts to 84volts) it can wreck a lot of things. It just happened to be that your OS hdd and video card were the weakest link for an electrical surge. You're very lucky you only lost two components instead of the entire thing. For future reference you should try to use an UPS for your desktop instead of a surge protector. At the very least your computer will have a few more minutes to shut down properly, instead of the power being yanked instantaneously.

What kind of surge protector you were using? What was it rated for?

Good luck with recovering your losses :thumbup:

 

[Paperdoc]

Surge protectors provide only limited protection. First of all, they do nothing at all for power SAGS - that is, when the supply voltage drops down, then recovers. During such an event it is possible for a computer to malfunction - for example, it could write faulty data to a hard drive. But that's a SAG, not a SURGE, and the Surge Protector does nothing.

The simplest Surge Protectors guard against excessively HIGH voltage using a device called an MOV or Metal Oxide Varistor. It is placed across the hot and neutral lines like a "short", except that it really conducts no current at normal voltages. At some much higher voltage, however, it conducts like crazy and does actually create a "short" between the lines, which prevents the high voltage spike from getting though to the load plugged into the device. However, in doing so it carries so much current for a short time that it allows itself to be destroyed. From then on, it is not doing anything! So, if there is a series of voltage spikes, the first one gets killed off, but any later ones get through because the original protector is gone.

Much better Surge Protectors are designed differently with circuits that survive the high voltage spike, and may even react faster for better protection, as well as continued protection.

A good UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) will have a good surge protection system at its input to protect itself and the load, and also will protect against voltage sags. Although they are primarily designed to keep the system running smoothly for a while (say, 5 to 30 minutes) when power fails completely, they handle short-term disruptions very well, too. Much more sophisticated, and more expensive, of course, than a simple surge-protected power bar.

 

[Billb2]

You may just have gotten the data on the HDD corrupted (by the power suddenly going off).

Try running fixboot and fixmbr from the windows XP recovery CD.

 

[Blain]

I don't really trust MOV type protectors very much.
There are surge protectors that don't use them, but you don't want to pay the price.

I've gone to a Delta surge protection scheme for the whole house.

* Delta Lightning Arrestor LA302-R...
"Although a lightning arrestor helps to prevent high voltage spikes from infiltrating your circuits, it does not protect against the common smaller surges."

* Delta Surge Capacitor CA302-R...
"Surge Capacitors pick up where lightning arrestors leave off and protect you against the smaller surges, which occur every day."

For covering brownouts and regulate your voltage, you could use a line conditioner like the APC LE1200.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Paperdoc
Surge protectors provide only limited protection. First of all, they do nothing at all for power SAGS - that is, when the supply voltage drops down, then recovers. During such an event it is possible for a computer to malfunction - for example, it could write faulty data to a hard drive. But that's a SAG, not a SURGE, and the Surge Protector does nothing.

The simplest Surge Protectors guard against excessively HIGH voltage using a device called an MOV or Metal Oxide Varistor. It is placed across the hot and neutral lines like a "short", except that it really conducts no current at normal voltages. At some much higher voltage, however, it conducts like crazy and does actually create a "short" between the lines, which prevents the high voltage spike from getting though to the load plugged into the device. However, in doing so it carries so much current for a short time that it allows itself to be destroyed. From then on, it is not doing anything! So, if there is a series of voltage spikes, the first one gets killed off, but any later ones get through because the original protector is gone.

Much better Surge Protectors are designed differently with circuits that survive the high voltage spike, and may even react faster for better protection, as well as continued protection.

A good UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) will have a good surge protection system at its input to protect itself and the load, and also will protect against voltage sags. Although they are primarily designed to keep the system running smoothly for a while (say, 5 to 30 minutes) when power fails completely, they handle short-term disruptions very well, too. Much more sophisticated, and more expensive, of course, than a simple surge-protected power bar.

well a good inline ups will..one that basically goes through the batterya ll the time. a cheaper one that doesn't kick in until something bad happens.. not sure how the ones that kick in only during power cut deal with sags really.

 

[corkyg]

The basic UPS is simply a battery backup that allows the system to gracefully shutdown, or run long enough for the use to shut it down.

The business of voltage regulation or power codnitioning requires a different breed of cat - they run about %1500 for the home. But, they do not provide for backup battery power. Simplistically they are line transformers that stabilze voltage within a specified range.

What you call "sags" may be intentional brownouts - fairly common in some areas, and very damaging to many appliances. Some brownouts can last for days. In some places, they are the norm.

 

[Coldkilla]

Thanks a lot for the input, now at least I can make some sort of sense on what happened. I'll look into a(n) UPS for my new system.

 

[Modelworks]

The problem with surge protectors is that some do not have an indicator that tells you when the surge protection is working. MOV can fail and if there is no indicator you may think you have protection when you do not.

If you don't have the money for a ups or don't care about battery backup you can get a line conditioner that has all the benefits of a high cost UPS except the backup power.
About $50
http://www.amazon.com/APC-LE12...egulator/dp/B00009RA60

 

[Paperdoc]

Corkyg and OrooOroo raise excellent points. Long-term low-voltage sessions (i.e., deliberate brown-outs from the utility company) can cause significant trouble (especially for larger motors like fridges, less so for computers) and really cannot be solved with most UPS's. All UPS's have at their hearts a battery, a DC-to-AC converter circuit that provides a semi-sinusoidal AC at the required voltage, and a charger that keeps the battery topped up when power is available. The better designs of UPS actually power the load from the battery and converter all the time, and keep the charger running all the time, too. A simpler design uses an automatic switch that powers the load from the wall outlet as well as keeping the battery charged, but tries to switch over to battery output quickly when the wall power fails. The switch-over process actually produces a voltage sag and surge which may or may not be acceptable to the load, depending on its own design. The simpler design is cheaper to make because the charger circuit can be made smaller than the output capacity.

Always remember that a UPS normally (unless you spend more on it than on your computer) has a limited output time, then it dies - sometimes suddenly, or sometimes just fades away. So the way you must use them is just to power your system through the supply interruption and then warn you what has happened. At that point you REALLY should intervene and smoothly shut down the system while you still have reliable power. Often this means shut down within 5 to 15 minutes, because that's all the time you have before the UPS's battery is drained. Leave it off until power is restored reliably. To prolong the UPS protection time, you reduce the load. That is, you plug in non-essential items like printers, scanners, sound systems, etc. to a NON-UPS supply, and use the UPS only for the computer and monitor.

For purposes of alarms, monitoring the power, etc, some UPS's designed for computer systems include an interface (USB common now) and software that allows the computer to keep track of the power situation. Typically the software can issue an alarm when primary power is interrupted and start a timer. If power is not restored within a specified time, the computer is set to shut itself down smoothly. Later you have to re-start it when power is restored. Some of these systems also provide some monitoring capability of the UPS's operations themselves.