Can voltage fluctuation cause hardware damage?

Ishit Singh · July 28, 2020

Due to heavy rain today my house experienced a lot voltage fluctuations which caused my PC to restart itself even though I have a decent UPS. I'm worried that this might've caused some hardware damage. So far my PC seems to be running normal but i'm not sure if it will in the long run.

Should I be worried about this and try to find if there's any damage (if there's a way to find it) or leave it as it is? This PC i have cost me around 1.5k that's why i'm worried.

bmx6454 · July 28, 2020

you can run various benchmarks to try and pinpoint any damage if there is any, i wouldn't be too worried though.

Windows7ge · July 28, 2020

What UPS because that really shouldn't happen unless your PSU can't handle the Square-Wave it probably puts out. Some electronics don't play friendly with Square-Wave and malfunction.

UPS's usually include a surge protector and the output is regulated so as to not allow power spikes or droops. The equipment is likely fine. I wouldn't worry too much about it unless you actually start to see it misbehaving in the coming days/weeks.

IBM_THINKPAD_R51 · July 28, 2020

34 minutes ago, Ishit Singh said:

Due to heavy rain today my house experienced a lot voltage fluctuations which caused my PC to restart itself even though I have a decent UPS. I'm worried that this might've caused some hardware damage. So far my PC seems to be running normal but i'm not sure if it will in the long run.

Should I be worried about this and try to find if there's any damage (if there's a way to find it) or leave it as it is? This PC i have cost me around 1.5k that's why i'm worried.

A decent (expensive) UPS will output a capped sin wave, the cheap UPS's will output square wave...u can tell by how much weird noise a PSU will make on battery power compared to normal wall power..a square wave from a cheap UPS isnt bad...but a computer could do a lot better with a capped sin wave (which u most likely have) so your fine...if your UPS is REALLY good then it will be a true sin wave in which case its obviously as perfect as it gets If you tell us the Model of your UPS i can tell you and show you which of the 3 it does.