PSU Sparking Noise? When turn off from back switch of pc it makes spark noise ??””

[WolfLoverPro]

Let me just say I always turn my pc off by the power supply then the socket and it never had made this noise 

 

it only does it if I switch the switch slowly but I’m sure I’ve never heard that before ever

 

 

[TetraSky]

This is a normal behavior when you flip an electrical switch, any switch, slowly. Don't do that.

 

Why oh why do you turn the PC off at the PSU? Don't. There's no reason to do so. Just flip the powerbar's switch instead if you really want to.

[Atmos]

3 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

This is a normal behavior when you flip an electrical switch, any switch, slowly. Don't do that.

 

Why oh why do you turn the PC off at the PSU? Don't. There's no reason to do so. Just flip the powerbar's switch instead if you really want to.

hey man, you don't know, maybe his case is just as fugged as mine and his computer turns itself back on whenever it turns off. And maybe he also has a bit of sadism and enjoys bleeding every last second out of flipping off the kill switch as his pc begs for safe shutdowns. You don't know, don't judge man.

[WolfLoverPro]

4 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

This is a normal behavior when you flip an electrical switch, any switch, slowly. Don't do that.

 

Why oh why do you turn the PC off at the PSU? Don't. There's no reason to do so. Just flip the powerbar's switch instead if you really want to.

Why? Cuz I like to save like 0.0.0.1p on my electric lol 

 

but the really though, I turn my sockets off anyway so turning the psu surely isn’t any different if I switch both off anyway??

[TetraSky]

1 minute ago, WolfLoverPro said:

Why? Cuz I like to save like 0.0.0.1p on my electric lol 

 

but the really though, I turn my sockets off anyway so turning the psu surely isn’t any different if I switch both off anyway??

It's like saying you're removing the light bulb in your fridge because you're unplugging the fridge. It's an unnecessary step. There's no point in doing so.
But hey, you do you.

[Spotty]

General forum why? You've been a member of these forums for over 4 years and you still don't know that there's a PSU forum?
 

Just now, WolfLoverPro said:

Why? Cuz I like to save like 0.0.0.1p on my electric lol 

 

but the really though, I turn my sockets off anyway so turning the psu surely isn’t any different if I switch both off anyway??

In standby your PSU will use less than 0.5W. No need to turn it off. Only turn it off if you are planning on relocating the PC or working on it, swapping hardware.

I bet this is how you turn your lights off too...

[Tiwaz]

21 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

This is a normal behavior when you flip an electrical switch, any switch, slowly. Don't do that.

 

Why oh why do you turn the PC off at the PSU? Don't. There's no reason to do so. Just flip the powerbar's switch instead if you really want to.

i switch off the psu because i dont want my pc to have lit up LEDs inside when i try to sleep

[WolfLoverPro]

10 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

It's like saying you're removing the light bulb in your fridge because you're unplugging the fridge. It's an unnecessary step. There's no point in doing so.
But hey, you do you.

So wtf do they have power switches if it’s unnecessary...... must be a reason loolloll'

[Spotty]

2 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

i switch off the psu because i dont want my pc to have lit up LEDs inside when i try to sleep

You can disable that in the BIOS...

[mariushm]

13 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

i switch off the psu because i dont want my pc to have lit up LEDs inside when i try to sleep

Go in BIOS and disable most stand-by features.  You'll have at most one led lit up then, the stand-by / power on led.  If you want, you can use a black marker over it and then your PC is completely light free. You can always remove the marker paint using some isopropyl alcohol or sanitary alcohol or acetone or any mild solvent.

 

@WolfLoverPro

The power switch sparks because as you slowly change the switch state, you're bringing the contacts inside closer together, until at some point electricity jumps between the metals and you create an arc of electricity. That's corroding, damaging the contacts, it's like spot welding between the metals, causing pits in the metals inside the switch, making the surfaces of the metal bits not level. The more sparks you create, the more those surfaces will be not level, and eventually no matter how fast you close the switch, there won't be a good contact, so the switch could overheat and break down completely.

You're not supposed to close switches slowly, switches are supposed to be switched fast, to keep this arcing effect to a minimum.

 

You're not supposed to use the power switch in the back of the PC often. The power supply is only supposed to be turned off completely when you need to be absolutely sure there's no power coming into the motherboard, for example when you're upgrading hardware, when you're adding a video card for example.

The motherboard uses the stand-by power to keep the bios settings for example, instead of using the CR2032 battery for that. That 3v battery is not rechargeable and would last only around 1-2 years if someone constantly turns off the power completely.

 

When your pc is off and the pc is in "stand-by" most modern supplies use very little power and these stand-by mini power supplies are fairly efficient, your pc will typically use less than 0.5w when turned off.

Considering 1kWh is around 0.1-0.2$ in most places, that means your pc would have to be in stand-by for around 2000 hours or around 90 days for your electricity counter to measure 1kWh. It's not worth messing with that power switch to save thousands of a penny, do something more useful with your time.

 

You also increase the risk of failure by doing that... the inrush of current into a power supply is one of the ways a power supply fails, the second is changes in temperature. At least when the power supply stays in stand-by the circuit inside stabilizes at a certain temperature and stays there.

Every time you start the power supply using the switch, current from mains rushes in capacitors, transformers and chip of that stand-by circuit, and these parts start to warm up ... these are things that can damage power supplies over long periods of time.

Statistically, the risk of failures decreases by keeping the power supply in stand-by 24/7  provided your power supply is not a super cheap one with poor efficiency (in which case the heat generated by the stand-by circuit could degrade components in that circuit and cause that circuit to fail after a few years)

 

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by mariushm
small typos

[Tiwaz]

6 minutes ago, mariushm said:

 

I am aware of the fact that you can somehow disable that in the BIOS, but i dont want to accidenatally disable a feature i want to have enabled and just swítching the PSU off also does the trick

[Tamesh16]

44 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

This is a normal behavior when you flip an electrical switch

so to prevent this forum from going off track, which it really has

i agree some switches, especially when dealing with inductors have fields that collapse and discharge high current across the switch so usually its recommended that you dont do that slowly, your psu has inductors to help rectify AC current to DC , so just try not to do that slowly, 

and in conclusion,

your psu is most likely fine 

 

[TetraSky]

26 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

I am aware of the fact that you can somehow disable that in the BIOS, but i dont want to accidenatally disable a feature i want to have enabled and just swítching the PSU off also does the trick

Put a tiny piece of electrical tape on the LED then. It's what I did with the ones I couldn't flat out rip/disconnect out of my case.

[Tiwaz]

23 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Put a tiny piece of electrical tape on the LED then. It's what I did with the ones I couldn't flat out rip/disconnect out of my case.

i want to see the RGB lights when the pc is on

[Spotty]

57 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

I am aware of the fact that you can somehow disable that in the BIOS, but i dont want to accidenatally disable a feature i want to have enabled and just swítching the PSU off also does the trick

7 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

i want to see the RGB lights when the pc is on

Easiest way would be to enable ErP in the BIOS. While the system is turned off the motherboard LEDs will be off and will disable the USB ports so no RGB for keyboards/mice/etc.

[Whiskers]

Thread moved from General Discussion to Cases and Power Supplies.

 

@WolfLoverPro Please check for a suitable subforum for your thread before posting it in the General Discussion section. GD is for threads which don't belong to a specific section of the forum but are still tech-related.

[WolfLoverPro]

4 hours ago, mariushm said:

Go in BIOS and disable most stand-by features.  You'll have at most one led lit up then, the stand-by / power on led.  If you want, you can use a black marker over it and then your PC is completely light free. You can always remove the marker paint using some isopropyl alcohol or sanitary alcohol or acetone or any mild solvent.

 

@WolfLoverPro

The power switch sparks because as you slowly change the switch state, you're bringing the contacts inside closer together, until at some point electricity jumps between the metals and you create an arc of electricity. That's corroding, damaging the contacts, it's like spot welding between the metals, causing pits in the metals inside the switch, making the surfaces of the metal bits not level. The more sparks you create, the more those surfaces will be not level, and eventually no matter how fast you close the switch, there won't be a good contact, so the switch could overheat and break down completely.

You're not supposed to close switches slowly, switches are supposed to be switched fast, to keep this arcing effect to a minimum.

 

You're not supposed to use the power switch in the back of the PC often. The power supply is only supposed to be turned off completely when you need to be absolutely sure there's no power coming into the motherboard, for example when you're upgrading hardware, when you're adding a video card for example.

The motherboard uses the stand-by power to keep the bios settings for example, instead of using the CR2032 battery for that. That 3v battery is not rechargeable and would last only around 1-2 years if someone constantly turns off the power completely.

 

When your pc is off and the pc is in "stand-by" most modern supplies use very little power and these stand-by mini power supplies are fairly efficient, your pc will typically use less than 0.5w when turned off.

Considering 1kWh is around 0.1-0.2$ in most places, that means your pc would have to be in stand-by for around 2000 hours or around 90 days for your electricity counter to measure 1kWh. It's not worth messing with that power switch to save thousands of a penny, do something more useful with your time.

 

You also increase the risk of failure by doing that... the inrush of current into a power supply is one of the ways a power supply fails, the second is changes in temperature. At least when the power supply stays in stand-by the circuit inside stabilizes at a certain temperature and stays there.

Every time you start the power supply using the switch, current from mains rushes in capacitors, transformers and chip of that stand-by circuit, and these parts start to warm up ... these are things that can damage power supplies over long periods of time.

Statistically, the risk of failures decreases by keeping the power supply in stand-by 24/7  provided your power supply is not a super cheap one with poor efficiency (in which case the heat generated by the stand-by circuit could degrade components in that circuit and cause that circuit to fail after a few years)

 

 

but ok what if i dont switch it off by the psu but still turn plug sockets off?

[Tiwaz]

3 hours ago, Spotty said:

Easiest way would be to enable ErP in the BIOS. While the system is turned off the motherboard LEDs will be off and will disable the USB ports so no RGB for keyboards/mice/etc.

i havent used BIOS for ages, where exactly is this in a Z97 Gigabyte BIOS? I want the lights on when the pc is running though. The LED I want to have turned off is the one on the Water cooler pump

[mariushm]

1 hour ago, WolfLoverPro said:

but ok what if i dont switch it off by the psu but still turn plug sockets off?

You won't cause "wear and tear" on the switch (the button) on the power supply, you're moving the wear and tear on the power supply switch to the switch on your extension cord, and that switch may go bad after a while.

However, the power supply would still be subjected to that "stress" when it receives a rush of energy in it, every time you press the switch on the extension cord or outlet.

Electronic devices typically don't like that, and over time, some components in the power supply may weaken and even break if you constantly disconnect the power supply completely and reconnect it.

 

[WolfLoverPro]

4 hours ago, mariushm said:

You won't cause "wear and tear" on the switch (the button) on the power supply, you're moving the wear and tear on the power supply switch to the switch on your extension cord, and that switch may go bad after a while.

However, the power supply would still be subjected to that "stress" when it receives a rush of energy in it, every time you press the switch on the extension cord or outlet.

Electronic devices typically don't like that, and over time, some components in the power supply may weaken and even break if you constantly disconnect the power supply completely and reconnect it.

 

so ur saying leave my plugs on.... but like the rgb mouse stays on for some reason and the pc is still using electric

 

and also my plugs like so hard to unplug stuff it has other electrics plugged in which is why not just the pc that is wasting electric when im asleep

[mariushm]

2 hours ago, WolfLoverPro said:

so ur saying leave my plugs on.... but like the rgb mouse stays on for some reason and the pc is still using electric

 

and also my plugs like so hard to unplug stuff it has other electrics plugged in which is why not just the pc that is wasting electric when im asleep

The leds on your mouse use something like 0.05 watts.

You can go in your computer's BIOS and disable stand by power on usb ports, wake on lan, mouse, keyboard features. I'm 100% sure there's a BIOS option to power off the usb ports - just look in the motherboard manual or directly in bios. 

As for other things in the extension cord - what other things do you have, the monitor, speakers etc ... they all use practically nothing while in stand-by, most modern equipment uses very little power, just leave them be.

 

Focus your energy in the right places... for example pee in the bathroom without turning on the light in the morning and you basically saved more power than what your computer uses over the course of several nights.

 

[Guest]

14 hours ago, Atmos said:

hey man, you don't know, maybe his case is just as fugged as mine and his computer turns itself back on whenever it turns off. 

In the BIOS, make sure "state after power failure" is set to "OFF".

14 hours ago, WolfLoverPro said:

Why? Cuz I like to save like 0.0.0.1p on my electric lol 

And shorten the life of your PSU by 0.1 day every time you do it.

 

[chckovsky]

11 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

And shorten the life of your PSU by 0.1 day every time you do it.

Wait, what? How so?

[Atmos]

41 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

In the BIOS, make sure "state after power failure" is set to "OFF".

And shorten the life of your PSU by 0.1 day every time you do it.

 

Ive already checked the bios, and its done it now with three motherboards lol. Something is funky with my front panel headers, its the only thing left lol. 

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, Atmos said:

Ive already checked the bios, and its done it now with three motherboards lol. Something is funky with my front panel headers, its the only thing left lol. 

Could be one of the devices you have plugged into USB.