Loud Pop + Smoke = Machine still working???

[BooST]

Well, last time I checked, a loudass pop and smoke + machine stalling meant somthing was screwed, but last night, my desktop machine did this... Pulled the plug on it, opened up the case, and checked around... Nothing. No burn marks, no evidence of an arc, I have no idea what the hell happened.

I put the power cable back in, and it works? This doesn't make any sense. I thought for sure somthing was screwed. No disk errors, nothing funny in device manager, nothing. The last time anything like this happened, (well, minus the smoke) A CD exploded in a drive.

Anyone have any ideas as to what the hell happened?

 

[RWIndiana]

Whoa.....interesting. I blew up a couple of hard drives that way. I unplugged and plugged it back in. It didn't like that, so it popped and started smoking. Hard drive was then dead. Obviously something not completely necessary blew up on your machine? lol that's just weird.

 

[BooST]

I agree, last time I checked, everything in there was pretty much essential

 

[blakerwry]

sounds like a capacitor might have popped... might want to check the base of capacitors or even for amissing cap.

 

[CraigLC]

I had that happen once....it booted and worked for awhile and then popped all over again and it was the power supply going bad. I later got another power supply ( scavenged from another case) and it lasted a few months before popping and crapping the bed.

 

[MaxBurn]

Totally agree with the cap idea.

DC caps used for filtering can detonate and the circuit will still work with more electrical "noise" in it. This cap could be on the main board or more likely the power supply.

 

[BooST]

Fun fun.... Looks like it's time to replace the powersupply in my Shuttle XPC. Fun

 

[MaxBurn]

Do make sure you do a good scan of the motherboard and PC cards too. Many reports of board makers having bad caps out there.

 

[BooST]

Well, I pulled the power supply apart, and I couldn't find any bad caps... Same thing with the motherboard/video card. I think I'm more agitated now that I can't find the problem component than the fact that a cap popped.

 

[Pradeep]

I had a PSU pop once, I took it out and something was rattling inside. Managed to shake black bits of plastic out, cap was a goner.

 

[Mercutio]

The last couple of times that's happened to me I found evidence of arcing on the underside of my motherboard.

 

[ddrueding]

The last couple of times that's happened to me I found evidence of arcing on the underside of my motherboard.

Indeed. I've found a few case manufacturers "cheat" on the underside of the board; using either shorter headers or sinking the mounting points below the level of the sheet metal. Either brings the bottom of the board closer to the grounded sheet metal of the case.

 

[RWIndiana]

I'm assuming you all clean the dust out of your cases with compressed air on a regular basis?