Externally Powered USB Hub Killed My PC.

Zayne · January 24, 2020

I’ll try to make this short and easy to understand:

This evening I plugged an externally power USB Hub into the front IO of the PC I recently built. As soon and the connector made contact with the port, the PC immediately shut off. However, the USB fan I had plugged in was still working, uninterrupted. Seconds later, the smell of smoke filled the room and I was having a massive anxiety attack. The PC refuses to turn on at all as a result of all this.

What I would love to know right now is essentially what exactly happened. Did it kill my motherboard? My PSU (I doubt it)? EVERYTHING PERHAPS?! Also, could I be eligible for replacement parts? I should also mention I have no spare compatible parts to complete tests with.

I’d just like to thank y’all in advance. Any help or feedback is just really appreciated. :’(

aisle9 · January 24, 2020

Sounds like it shorted. Contact the seller and manufacturer ASAP. Were you using the power adapter included in the package or a different one? Do you know where the magic smoke was coming from?

The only way to know what all was affected is to take it apart and test one component at a time. If it won't power on at all (as in, no lights, no fans, nothing happens when you plug it in, turn on the PSU and hit the power button), you might have managed to kill your PSU and nothing else. Start by tearing the system down to just mobo+CPU+RAM. Disconnect the PSU from everything, plug it in, then short the green and black wires to see if the fan kicks in. I use a paperclip wrapped in electrical tape to do this. If the PSU doesn't do anything when shorted, it's dead, and you'll need to get a different one to continue on. If it works, connect it to the motherboard/CPU/RAM and use a screwdriver on the front panel connectors to try and short the thing to life. If it fires up, ok, cool. Keep on moving down the line. If it doesn't at all, take every RAM stick out and put one in the slot farthest from the CPU socket (so, far right). Try to boot. If it boots, you probably have a dead RAM slot. If it doesn't, keep moving to other slots, one by one and one stick at a time, until you either get a POST or have gone through all of them with no success, which is pretty much a gg for your board.

If the hub was connected to a case USB connector and not directly to the back of the mobo, take a look around the header the USB slot in use was connected to and look for any scorch marks. If it did short the board, the USB header was probably damaged.

It's really just a matter of taking the thing down to its most basic components and walking through step by step to see what it takes to get it to POST.