A PSU write-off or not?

[HippoPCBuilder]

So I was testing some old PC hardware from a 15-20 year old HP tower that hadn‘t been working, and I was testing it with my personal rig‘s PSU which should have been more than capable of running this thing. On pressing the power switch, sparks immediately came out of the graphics card, then the PSU and CPU fans started at full speed, but I had already turned off the PSU at the switch and unplugged everything to make it safe. 

If this GPU was sparking and maybe short-circuiting, should I get a new PSU just to be on the safe side? I know that any PSU damage should basically mean a new PSU for safety, and there is a strong plasticy burning smell in the room I was testing in. 

[ki8aras]

7 minutes ago, HippoPCBuilder said:

So I was testing some old PC hardware from a 15-20 year old HP tower that hadn‘t been working, and I was testing it with my personal rig‘s PSU which should have been more than capable of running this thing. On pressing the power switch, sparks immediately came out of the graphics card, then the PSU and CPU fans started at full speed, but I had already turned off the PSU at the switch and unplugged everything to make it safe. 

If this GPU was sparking and maybe short-circuiting, should I get a new PSU just to be on the safe side? I know that any PSU damage should basically mean a new PSU for safety, and there is a strong plasticy burning smell in the room I was testing in. 

you can take it to your local computer shop and have them test it on some e waste hardware

[manikyath]

if sparks came out the PSU, i wouldnt risk it.. but i'm also amazed that there could have been any fault in the GPU bad enough to cause sparks in the PSU.

[HippoPCBuilder]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if sparks came out the PSU, i wouldnt risk it.. but i'm also amazed that there could have been any fault in the GPU bad enough to cause sparks in the PSU.

There weren‘t sparks in the PSU: the sparks were on the GPU.

I was just worried that the GPU might have short-circuited something.

[manikyath]

12 minutes ago, HippoPCBuilder said:

There weren‘t sparks in the PSU: the sparks were on the GPU.

I was just worried that the GPU might have short-circuited something.

oh, i misread, my mistake.

 

i'd check out with a voltmeter or with one of those cheapo psu testers to see if psu voltages are normal. if they are, i wouldnt be too worried.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I mean to be fair, if the GPU MOSFETs were faulty it could produce quite a lot of sparks without really stressing the PSU at all as it would shove 12v into the parts of the GPU expecting 1/12 of that.

 

If its a good PSU and it never shut off by itself, it probably didn't actually short out or overload.

[HippoPCBuilder]

6 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I mean to be fair, if the GPU MOSFETs were faulty it could produce quite a lot of sparks without really stressing the PSU at all as it would shove 12v into the parts of the GPU expecting 1/12 of that.

 

If its a good PSU and it never shut off by itself, it probably didn't actually short out or overload.

It‘s a be quiet! 450W System Power 10.

[HippoPCBuilder]

1 hour ago, HippoPCBuilder said:

It‘s a be quiet! 450W System Power 10.

Also, is it likely that that fried the motherboard as well? I‘m worried about plugging it in now

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 9/15/2024 at 9:47 PM, HippoPCBuilder said:

Also, is it likely that that fried the motherboard as well? I‘m worried about plugging it in now

Impossible to say, depends exactly what was going on.  Does it have an iGPU you can use to not risk a different dGPU?

[Bagzie]

Honestly yout psu is probably fine.

 

Sounds like something on the GPU is shorted....psu won't care it'll just throw power at it.