Can lightning kill a PC?

[Turtletim3000]

I was just curious to know whether this is something to worry about or if it's just a myth.

[Remixt]

Lighting or lightning? Either way the answer is yes, but your question is very vague.

[Logarithm]

Yes. Lighting can kill most things. It's lighting.

[RangerLunis]

Lighting as in like led strips? All depends on how many your using i'd suppose. Of course if you used too many lights, you could overdraw from your power supply, but it's highly unlikely since led lights don't use much power at all from my knowledge, nor does it output much heat. So my answer would be no. 

[NavyCuda]

Lighting or lightening?

 

I've heard many times that lightening can kill a computer, but I never shut mine off and have not had an issue related to it.  I have a good powerbar though.

 

Now brown-outs on the otherhand I have had one HDD die immediately after a brown out but that drive was ancient and well past the best before date.

[VerticalDiscussions]

Lightning discharges, yes. Altough, depending on the quality of the PSU (can take some hits) or by owning a lightning protection station UPS, you can mitigate such damage.

 

Lighting, will kill your wallet faster than a fish will run out of juice, especially if you try to insert a Xenon fleslight on your computer!

[Turtletim3000]

sorry I meant lightning 

[Guest]

If your PC gets struck by lightning yes, it will probably die. But if you mean when the power goes out yes that can damage components. 

[Remixt]

My old alienware was fried by lighting earlier this year

[Turtletim3000]

I mean like, lightning strikes nearby, the lights flicker, and all of a sudden your PC doesn't work; someone recently told me this happen to them and that their PC died after the fact. 

[Tech_Dreamer]

1 minute ago, Turtletim3000 said:

I mean like, lightning strikes nearby, the lights flicker, and all of a sudden your PC doesn't work; someone recently told me this happen to them and that their PC died after the fact. 

that's surge burning out the pc component, for that to happen one has to be plugged directly to the wall with no surge protection plus crappy PSU to amplify the effect, there's another scenario where lights flicker due to emp/brown outs surrounding the range near lightning strike , these are generally harmless to components which isn't directly fed by the over surge of extremely high voltage which happens on direct hit on the power field

 

plus , a worse case scenario,  the same thing can happen if plugged onto ethernet & the lightning doesn't even have to be near your region, but current gen mid range motherboards can handle this loose surge, can't say the same about crappy mobo's tho

[porina]

I had a blown modem (33.6kbps), printer and motherboard from a strike once many years ago. It probably came in on the phone line. Two phones were also toast, and the CRT TV (LCD panels didn't exist then) took a funny colour until it got demagnetised.

[IBeRamen]

My friend had lightning strike in his front lawn and it killed his Ethernet port. Surprisingly the rest of the pc works except the Ethernet port.

[SLAYR]

44 minutes ago, Turtletim3000 said:

I mean like, lightning strikes nearby, the lights flicker, and all of a sudden your PC doesn't work; someone recently told me this happen to them and that their PC died after the fact. 

Yes, it can happen

 

a upc or surge protector can usually save whatever is plugged into it though.

[plsno]

Of course they can. If you're worried about it then get a ups and renters insurance.

[straight_stewie]

1 hour ago, Turtletim3000 said:

I was just curious to know whether this is something to worry about or if it's just a myth.

Lightning can kill whatever it wants to, even dirt.

[ThioJoe]

There's really nothing you can do to protect from a direct lightning hit, it will fry anything.  Power surges though can be mitigated with a surge protector with both a high joules rating and low response time.  A good uninterruptible power supply (with built in surge protector) will be your best bet.

[BuckGup]

My Neighbors had a ball of fire shoot out of their wall socket and start their house on fire. Lightning is very unpredictable