PSU and tester almost caught fire!

Today a customer dropped off a tower PC. He had just replaced the power supply. The green light on the motherboard came on but the system would not turn on.

A routine issue, until I connected the 24-pin and 4-pin PSU connectors to my PSU tester.

No reading came up. Within 2 seconds, I noticed thick wisps of smoke coming off both the PSU and tester! :eek

I immediately yanked the plug out of the power supply. Even though both had only smoked for a few seconds, I had to leave the shop for a few minutes until the stench cleared out.

This is the first time I've ever had this happen in 15 years of PC repair (and I guess this is what the name "DiabloTek" means - hook it up and Hell fire instantly appears :-D).

Although no damage was done (aside from a few minutes of smoke induced nausea), it reaffirms my decision last year to spend about $100 on a CO2 fire extinguisher for my shop. Although I caught the issue early enough to avoid a fire (by a few seconds), this should serve as a heads up that a good fire extinguisher should be close by in any home or business.

I have both an ABC (dry chemical powder) and CO2 extinguisher. The benefit of having a CO2 unit is it won't destroy nearby equipment with a thick residue of powder.

 

Pictures dude!:cool

Damn both? Plug the psu in again and see if you can get a voltage reading from the mobo power connector:dood Seriously,be interesting to know if its gone live:-D

 

Somehow, it didn't melt anything on the outside of the PSU tester or the PSU itself. If it had left any scorch marks, I'd be posting pics of this DiabloTek PSU all over the Internet. :crap

Believe it or not, the motherboard survived the time it was connected to this PSU. I hooked up a cheap Logisys 480w to it and it started up without any problem. :confused

 

Thanks for the reminder on fire extinguishers!

I had a small house fire a few years back and it was frightening how fast the house filled up with smoke. An old lamp cord sparked somewhere and caught the drapes on fire. They went up from outlet to ceiling in seconds. Without an extinguisher the whole room or house would have been gone. I guess the idea of flame-retardent fabrics never tool off the way I thought it had. It was shocking.

My extinguisher was at least 10 years old and I never bothered to check it to see if it was sufficiently charged. I was lucky that it was there and that I was home (I often left that light on when I went out). Needless to say I take my fire extinguishers much more seriously now. They get checked and will be replaced as soon as they go below fully charged.

 

They can be recharged if needed they might charge you 100$ to do it though not sure what the price is to recharge a fire extinguisher really goes for.Depends on what state and what area you live in i guess

 

Thanks. I just buy the consumer models. About $30-50. One in the kitchen and one at the top of the basement steps. Pretty much one use. Like your estimate, getting someone qualified to recharge, probably costs more to recharge than replace.

I just never thought I would really need one. I don't really even remember purchasing the fire extinguishers. I don't take them for granted anymore. My lamp looked fine and was running a 27w twisty bulb. I could never imagine that being a fire hazard. It was amazingly fast how quickly the drapes went up and the house filled with thick smoke. Really frightening. I had the drapes cleaned about two years before, so maybe it was a chemical used, but I thought drapes and carpets were supposed to be flame retardant?

I'm just hoping others reading this thread check that they know where their fire extinguishers are located.