PSU circuit breaker problems

[alexander.o]

I bought a system with a Silverstone sst-st1000-p. It immediately trips my circuit breaker when I plug in the PSU (not turning on the system). 

 

According to the seller, it's due to the PSU not having a on/off switch, and that the capacitors "fill" themselves up, and that current draw is over my circuit's breaker. 

 

The seller used the system, and it worked just fine, so the only problem is the PSU problem.

 

How can I fix this issue? 

[Bombastinator]

31 minutes ago, alexander.o said:

I bought a system with a Silverstone sst-st1000-p. It immediately trips my circuit breaker when I plug in the PSU (not turning on the system). 

 

According to the seller, it's due to the PSU not having a on/off switch, and that the capacitors "fill" themselves up, and that current draw is over my circuit's breaker. 

 

The seller used the system, and it worked just fine, so the only problem is the PSU problem.

 

How can I fix this issue? 

Better wiring in your house, get the pc onto a circuit that is not so loaded, or reduce the load on that circuit are the obvious ones.  Doesn’t mean any of em are viable though.  Seems like a household electrical issue more than an electronics one.  Makes me wonder about what all else is on the problem circuit and how big it is.  “Penny in the fuse box” solutions can be really dangerous and I personally would avoid them.  If you’re popping breakers by running a computer on a circuit that circuit is under heavy load. 

[alexander.o]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

Better wiring in your house, get the pc onto a circuit that is not so loaded, or reduce the load on that circuit are the obvious ones.  Doesn’t mean any of em are viable though.  Seems like a household electrical issue more than an electronics one.  Makes me wonder about what all else is on the problem circuit and how big it is.  “Penny in the fuse box” solutions can be really dangerous and I personally would avoid them.  If you’re popping breakers by running a computer on a circuit that circuit is under heavy load. 

My thoughts as well. I had nothing on in both rooms the circuit is on, so I don't think that's the issue. I don't really feel like rewiring my house just to get a PC to work...

 

I've got 230V in, and my circuit is 10 amps. There's my room and a side office on the "bad" circuit, and there was nothing on (plugging in the 1000w psu pc turned everything off). No lights on, no fans no nothing. Maybe a monitor that draws 10W at idle, but nothing else. No floor heating either (it's summer and it's hot). No AC. 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, alexander.o said:

My thoughts as well. I had nothing on in both rooms the circuit is on, so I don't think that's the issue. I don't really feel like rewiring my house just to get a PC to work...

 

I've got 230V in, and my circuit is 10 amps. There's my room and a side office on the "bad" circuit, and there was nothing on (plugging in the 1000w psu pc turned everything off). No lights on, no fans no nothing. Maybe a monitor that draws 10W at idle, but nothing else. No floor heating either (it's summer and it's hot). No AC. 

So the pc is the only thing on the circuit? That it it goes more places than you think it does is always a possibility unless you were the one that installed it.  It might also be something else is drawing power in for example the office that you don’t know about.  If it really is true though a PC shouldn’t be drawing 10 amps that’s a lot of power for a PC.  I remember seeing a video about counterfeit breakers by a guy in the UK. They were apparently very convincing cases with nearly nothing in them.

[alexander.o]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

So the pc is the only thing on the circuit? That it it goes more places than you think it does is always a possibility unless you were the one that installed it.  It might also be something else is drawing power in for example the office that you don’t know about.  If it really is true though a PC shouldn’t be drawing 10 amps that’s a lot of power for a PC.  I remember seeing a video about counterfeit breakers by a guy in the UK. They were apparently very convincing cases with nearly nothing in them.

The PC was the only thing drawing more than 25W on the circuit. Unless something else is wired up on the circuit which IS possible, but unlikely. The house is from 1905 AFAIK, so it could've been wired incorrectly over the years. Do you have any tips what I should do?

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, alexander.o said:

The PC was the only thing drawing more than 25W on the circuit. Unless something else is wired up on the circuit which IS possible, but unlikely. The house is from 1905 AFAIK, so it could've been wired incorrectly over the years. Do you have any tips what I should do?

I live in a different country which has a very different power system than you so o may be the wrong person to ask. In the US I might be employing measurement tools to determine how much power is actually flowing when the computer is not plugged in.  I’m remembering in the UK for example most houses were retrofitted with electricity after world war 2 and an unusual and it turns out unusually excellent system was used. I’m not familiar with its proclivities. 

[Bitter]

 How about this.

turn off breaker

plug in PSU

turn on breaker

now the breaker should trip, reset it, does it immediately pop again or does it stay on? If it stays on it's possible that the inrush current is the issue, that could cause problems for breakers if they're a certain type or very old and worn out. Sometimes worn breakers will trip at much much lower loads than their rating and certain breaker types will trip on sudden spikes of current that are below their rating (because it takes less than 10 amps to kill a person).

 

Could also just be a defective PSU! Try using it at a different building, maybe find a local PC shop that would let you plug it into their wall, I'm sure if you called and explained they'd let you borrow an outlet to try it and being a commercial building probably have more current wiring and known good circuits.

[alexander.o]

2 minutes ago, Bitter said:

 How about this.

turn off breaker

plug in PSU

turn on breaker

now the breaker should trip, reset it, does it immediately pop again or does it stay on? If it stays on it's possible that the inrush current is the issue, that could cause problems for breakers if they're a certain type or very old and worn out. Sometimes worn breakers will trip at much much lower loads than their rating and certain breaker types will trip on sudden spikes of current that are below their rating (because it takes less than 10 amps to kill a person).

 

Could also just be a defective PSU! Try using it at a different building, maybe find a local PC shop that would let you plug it into their wall, I'm sure if you called and explained they'd let you borrow an outlet to try it and being a commercial building probably have more current wiring and known good circuits.

I had the PC plugged in while the breaker was off (flipped) and the circuit breaker just went right off when I tried to "open" it up again. Immediate pop. I'll see if I can do that, yeah

[Bitter]

10 minutes ago, alexander.o said:

I had the PC plugged in while the breaker was off (flipped) and the circuit breaker just went right off when I tried to "open" it up again. Immediate pop. I'll see if I can do that, yeah

Ah. Sounds like you either need a new PSU or an electrician. Being that the house is from 1095, if the PSU is good then you need an electrician!

[akio123008]

5 hours ago, alexander.o said:

According to the seller, it's due to the PSU not having a on/off switch, and that the capacitors "fill" themselves up, and that current draw is over my circuit's breaker.

The capacity of a computer power supply's input capacitors isn't big enough to trip breakers, unless the circuit is very, very heaviliy loaded already. 

Given you haven't mentioned any other problems with the electrical system, I highly suspect the PSU is the problem. 

 

Here's what you need to do:

 

- first of all, identify that what popped is definitely a breaker, not an RCD (residual current device). Both are usually installed in your house, and they look quite similar but have different functions. Which one of these tripped is important, because it identifies a very different kind of issue (the details of which I won't go into in this post)

 

- If you have a multimeter, you can test if the power supply's input is dodgy. Set it to continuity (beeping) mode and probe between all these pins:

You may hear it beep for say half a second (as caps get charged), but then it should stop. If at any point, probing any combination of these pins, you hear a continuous beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep that doesn't stop, that thing is bad. You can then troubleshoot further what's wrong with it, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

 

- Finally:

5 hours ago, alexander.o said:

According to the seller,

How about you take it to his place and plug it in. Has he recently tested it or has this thing been on a shelf for a couple years?

 

4 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

 I remember seeing a video about counterfeit breakers by a guy in the UK

Haha if only the OP had those. The problem would be solved as they never trip!

 

 

[Bombastinator]

16 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

The capacity of a computer power supply's input capacitors isn't big enough to trip breakers, unless the circuit is very, very heaviliy loaded already. 

Given you haven't mentioned any other problems with the electrical system, I highly suspect the PSU is the problem. 

 

Here's what you need to do:

 

- first of all, identify that what popped is definitely a breaker, not an RCD (residual current device). Both are usually installed in your house, and they look quite similar but have different functions. Which one of these tripped is important, because it identifies a very different kind of issue (the details of which I won't go into in this post)

 

- If you have a multimeter, you can test if the power supply's input is dodgy. Set it to continuity (beeping) mode and probe between all these pins:

You may hear it beep for say half a second (as caps get charged), but then it should stop. If at any point, probing any combination of these pins, you hear a continuous beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep that doesn't stop, that thing is bad. You can then troubleshoot further what's wrong with it, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

 

- Finally:

How about you take it to his place and plug it in. Has he recently tested it or has this thing been on a shelf for a couple years?

 

Haha if only the OP had those. The problem would be solved as they never trip!

 

 

So they are penny-in-the-fusebox devices.  I don’t know much about them.  I confirmed that it wasn’t germaine to me and moved on. Someone’s eventually going to die in a fire from those if it hasn’t happened already.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Bombastinator

[akio123008]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

So they are penny-in-the-fusebox devices.  I don’t know much about them.  I confirmed that it wasn’t germaine to me and moved on. Someone’s eventually going to die in a fire from those if it hasn’t happened already.

If I remember correctly those breakers were just flip switches that looked like breakers. I have never encountered them IRL which is good news I suppose.

[Bitter]

Well in the UK plugs have fuses in them too so it's less likely to cause a fire unless it's from overload.

[Elisis]

7 hours ago, akio123008 said:

The capacity of a computer power supply's input capacitors isn't big enough to trip breakers

Inrush current can be a huge problem with certain units, so that's not quite true...

 

@alexander.oI would heavily recommend replacing the PSU even if you manage to get it to work due to its age and resultant shittiness by modern standards
 

[Bombastinator]

10 hours ago, Bitter said:

Ah. Sounds like you either need a new PSU or an electrician. Being that the house is from 1095, if the PSU is good then you need an electrician!

Given the rest of this thread perhaps both   sounding expensive.

[akio123008]

7 hours ago, Elisis said:

Inrush current can be a huge problem with certain units, so that's not quite true...

No, because the inrush current doesn't last long enough. The peak current isn't important¹, it's about the duration. Look, here's a diagram of some random circuit breaker:

 

 

As you can see, at 9X (!) the rated current it takes a full second for the breaker to react. Now some breakers might be a bit faster or even slower, depending on the class, but this is just to illustrate they are far from instant. 

 

The inrush current of a computer PSU is far below that amount, and lasts far, far shorter. Those capacitors are nowhere near big enough to trip the breaker unless there's already a severe load on the circuit, or the breaker is very undersized/extremely fast.

 

¹ as in, useless information if you don't know anything about the duration of the spike.

 

[Elisis]

1 hour ago, akio123008 said:

No, because the inrush current doesn't last long enough. The peak current isn't important¹, it's about the duration

I'm well aware as to how fuses work lol... And the fact still stands that if you run per-room fuses, the likelihood of a shitty PSU tripping it is actually rather likely. It's very far from a nonissue.

[alexander.o]

21 hours ago, akio123008 said:

The capacity of a computer power supply's input capacitors isn't big enough to trip breakers, unless the circuit is very, very heaviliy loaded already. 

Given you haven't mentioned any other problems with the electrical system, I highly suspect the PSU is the problem. 

 

Here's what you need to do:

 

- first of all, identify that what popped is definitely a breaker, not an RCD (residual current device). Both are usually installed in your house, and they look quite similar but have different functions. Which one of these tripped is important, because it identifies a very different kind of issue (the details of which I won't go into in this post)

 

- If you have a multimeter, you can test if the power supply's input is dodgy. Set it to continuity (beeping) mode and probe between all these pins:

You may hear it beep for say half a second (as caps get charged), but then it should stop. If at any point, probing any combination of these pins, you hear a continuous beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep that doesn't stop, that thing is bad. You can then troubleshoot further what's wrong with it, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

 

- Finally:

How about you take it to his place and plug it in. Has he recently tested it or has this thing been on a shelf for a couple years?

 

Haha if only the OP had those. The problem would be solved as they never trip!

 

 

- first of all, identify that what popped is definitely a breaker, not an RCD (residual current device). Both are usually installed in your house, and they look quite similar but have different functions. Which one of these tripped is important, because it identifies a very different kind of issue (the details of which I won't go into in this post)

 

How do I check that?

 

- If you have a multimeter, you can test if the power supply's input is dodgy. Set it to continuity (beeping) mode and probe between all these pins:

 

No beeping. I think I set it to the right thing (it beeped when I took the red and the black things together). Excuse my awful terminology, 

 

I measured the resistance between the two pins that aren't ground at 244 kOhms. Dunno if that's helpful. 

 

- Finally:

How about you take it to his place and plug it in. Has he recently tested it or has this thing been on a shelf for a couple years?

 

He lives kinda far away and I'm kinda lazy. He tested it not working in his room with a 13amp breaker, but it worked fine in his bathroom with a 16amp breaker. 230V, same as me. 

I will ask when the last time he used the PSU was!

[alexander.o]

13 hours ago, Elisis said:

Inrush current can be a huge problem with certain units, so that's not quite true...

 

@alexander.oI would heavily recommend replacing the PSU even if you manage to get it to work due to its age and resultant shittiness by modern standards
 

Good idea - I was not planning to use it at all. 

[alexander.o]

19 hours ago, akio123008 said:

If I remember correctly those breakers were just flip switches that looked like breakers. I have never encountered them IRL which is good news I suppose.

I can send a pic of the fuse (or what trips, whatever it is). I'll edit it into this reply in a couple of minutes. 

https://imgur.com/a/mZ3rswS it's the number 3 thing that trips

[akio123008]

25 minutes ago, alexander.o said:

I can send a pic of the fuse (or what trips, whatever it is). I'll edit it into this reply in a couple of minutes. 

https://imgur.com/a/mZ3rswS it's the number 3 thing that trips

Those are B-type breakers which trip fairly quickly. (see image)

 

So given that, and the mere 10A rating @Elisisand the seller could be right, but it's a borderline case. A B-type breaker trips at 3-5x the rated current, so 30-50A. Not impossible with this power supply.

 

50 minutes ago, alexander.o said:

but it worked fine in his bathroom with a 16amp breaker. 230V, same as me. 

That is a pretty good indication as well. 

 

53 minutes ago, alexander.o said:

I measured the resistance between the two pins that aren't ground at 244 kOhms. Dunno if that's helpful. 

The resistance isn't interesting so long as it's not 0 (which is when it beeps). If it beeps probing between any combination of these pins something would be shorted which would mean the breaker tripped because of a short circuit, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

If you're lucky you might be able to run the PC on a really long extension cord. In that case there might be just enough resistance to limit the current to an acceptable level.

 

[alexander.o]

5 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

Those are B-type breakers which trip fairly quickly. (see image)

 

So given that, and the mere 10A rating @Elisisand the seller could be right, but it's a borderline case. A B-type breaker trips at 3-5x the rated current, so 30-50A. Not impossible with this power supply.

 

That is a pretty good indication as well. 

 

The resistance isn't interesting so long as it's not 0 (which is when it beeps). If it beeps probing between any combination of these pins something would be shorted which would mean the breaker tripped because of a short circuit, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

If you're lucky you might be able to run the PC on a really long extension cord. In that case there might be just enough resistance to limit the current to an acceptable level.

 

Do you think the PSU is fine then? And is is just my "crappy" 10A breaker that sucks? 

[akio123008]

5 minutes ago, alexander.o said:

Do you think the PSU is fine then? And is is just my "crappy" 10A breaker that sucks? 

I suspect the PSU isn't broken (but there's no way of being sure without having seen it running of course). 

 

The "crappy" 10A breaker isn't crappy because it's doing exactly what it's designed for haha. 

 

Are all your circuits 10A with these same breakers? If you had some other circuit in the house that had more capacity you could test the pc on that. Perhaps the circuit that's used for kitchen appliances? (or any circuit that runs heavier equipment)

[alexander.o]

13 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

I suspect the PSU isn't broken (but there's no way of being sure without having seen it running of course). 

 

The "crappy" 10A breaker isn't crappy because it's doing exactly what it's designed for haha. 

 

Are all your circuits 10A with these same breakers? If you had some other circuit in the house that had more capacity you could test the pc on that. Perhaps the circuit that's used for kitchen appliances? (or any circuit that runs heavier equipment)

I think almost all are 10A, lemme check.(no they aren't lol) I'll send a pic of the paper where it says breaker amp "size" + all the breakers

https://imgur.com/aznKNKy

https://imgur.com/tWXwNbY

@akio123008

[akio123008]

1 hour ago, alexander.o said:

https://imgur.com/aznKNKy

https://imgur.com/tWXwNbY

8, 9, 12, 13 and 14 would work, but it might be difficult to pull your oven out the way etc.

 

One thing though, the one at 10 (garage?) uses a different looking breaker. Perhaps that one is a C type which will react slower. It's possible they installed that because people tend to use power tools in their shed or outdoors. You could try the computer on that circuit.

 

edit: according to Google translate 13 is your kitchen. So find an outlet there and it'll probably work.