holy crap, my computer blew up

Sitting here practicing on video poker software, and suddenly, BLAM! Sparks, smoke, crackling sound, and everything shuts down. I pull all the plugs out of the wall immediately. My first thought is too much cat urine in my computer. But that wasn't it, I guess my power supply was old and decided to blow up. My living room smelled like electric stuff and smoke for a half hour. I touch the computer and it was hot as f-k. Not the cpu, I knew that had been running cool. But the tower was HOT where the power supply was. My fear, that I had lost all my video poker stuff, was relieved when I swapped out another power supply from another computer, within a half hour I'm up and running again and able to go on the internet and tell anonymous people to go F themselves. All is well.

Quote: bobbartop

My first thought is too much cat urine in my computer.

Yes, for best results, no more than a few drops a day.

We had a computer we put together at work actually catch fire. It had been up and running for 3 months, and then all of the sudden, smoke and flames. Everything in the box was fried, but fortunately none of the nearby devices were harmed. Turns out it was faulty wiring in the SDD we used. We rebuilt the system with all the same components except a different hard drive. It's been running fine for 4 years now.

Quote: bobbartop

I'm up and running again and able to go on the internet and tell anonymous people to go F themselves.

Well, that is what technology is for! ;)

Quote: Joeman

We had a computer we put together at work actually catch fire. It had been up and running for 3 months, and then all of the sudden, smoke and flames. Everything in the box was fried, but fortunately none of the nearby devices were harmed. Turns out it was faulty wiring in the SDD we used. We rebuilt the system with all the same components except a different hard drive. It's been running fine for 4 years now.

I have never before given second thought to leaving the house with the computer on. I rarely turn it off. Maybe I should re-think that. Right now everything is cool as a cucumber but that box was really hot yesterday. What if it had caught fire like yours did? My cpu is actually cooler now, I guess the thing had actually been heating up other things near it. An experience I won't soon forget.

Quote: bobbartop

I have never before given second thought to leaving the house with the computer on. I rarely turn it off. Maybe I should re-think that. Right now everything is cool as a cucumber but that box was really hot yesterday. What if it had caught fire like yours did? My cpu is actually cooler now, I guess the thing had actually been heating up other things near it. An experience I won't soon forget.

I'm with you -- I never thought twice about leaving it on. After this incident, I never leave the home computer on any more, especially if we leave our dog at home. I still leave my work computer on since I have it set up to run some maintenance tasks overnight.

During the postmortem analysis, we could tell that the fire started at the hard drive. I did an online search of the SSD i was using, and found someone who had the exact same scenario as ours with the SSD wiring shorting out and causing a fire. We rebuilt the system using the exact same components, but with a HDD instead of a SSD. It has been up and running for almost 4 years without incident.

The box was mounted in a rack with other electronics, basically unattended. One of the techs nearby noticed the smoke and was able to put the fire out quickly. We were lucky that none of the other components in the rack were damaged.