Power Surge Multiple hardware issues

[manno]

Hi guys

 

Long time fan, first time poster. 

 

I'm in desperate need of some advice. A couple of nights ago, while playing a game (supreme commander ftw), something went 'pop', and my PC hard shut down. after looking around for a couple of minutes, I found that the fuse (MCB) for the sockets in my flat had tripped. So expecting this to be a random trip, I switched it back on thinking "phew, at least my PC should be ok". everything came on, except for the things at my computer desk. Long story short, I found that the Belikin Surge protector that I had invested in to protect my beloved PC had what looks like a small explosion mark inside it, and it is completely non-functioning. So, once again I thought "phew, at least my PC should be ok". so, to test, I plugged my PC into a cheaper surge protector I had lying around, so I could use it until I got a new surge protector. Again, my PC didn't switch on. so I thought, "shit, my PSU must have blown". So, before the 6PM Prime deadline, I purchased a new EVGA 650W PSU, which arrived this morning. 

 

Despite some boot errors, my PC is now Running. I ran some memory tests, GPU benchmarks (furmark), and some basic HDD tests, and it seems to be ok. However, my eventvwr is frequently indicating some major hardware failures, and not one game in my installed steam games list works.

 

So, at this point, I am shitting my pants. 

 

Although I'm experienced in IT, I am very green when it comes to diagnosing damage like this. Would someone be able to help me out? Initially I need to find out exactly what's damaged, how it's damaged, probable causes, and whether I am able to claim anything from Belkin. I would be very greatful if I could get some advice on any of this!

 

I'll add my specs below, just in case you need to know soemthing:
 

Corsair CX750 Builder Series CX 750W ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze PSU (This is the one that failed)

MSI H87-G43 Gaming Motherboard

Sapphire AMD RX480 Nitro+ 8 GB GDDR5

Intel Core i5 4690K Processor

Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 Vengeance 2 x 4GB

SanDisk SSD PLUS 240 GB up to 520 MB/s

WDC WD1002FBYS-18A6B0

WDC WD6400AARS-00Y5B1

 

 

Thanks

 

 

[MrDrWho13]

Sounds like some/all of your hard drives may be damaged. You could try running a chkdsk?

tbh the motherboard may have also taken a blow but I'm not sure how you'd troubleshoot without having a load of spare parts lying around.

[manno]

Thank you, Doctor

that does sound possible, but I've tried a few tests including chkdsk,SMART,surface level, etc, but none of them are showing any issues on any of my HDD/SSDs

[Leonard]

Nice first post, better than most.

 

Well you will have to check the warranty of the surge protector to have an idea what you are actually covered for then call the belkin people and then have them let you know exactly what they will cover if anything at all. I would advise that you take pictures of all blown components to forward to belkin.

 

I doubt you will actually know what really caused it other than an electrician saying you got a surge, maybe the power company might give some insight if they are willing to be honest.

Next time get a line conditioner or preferably a UPS with pure sine wave for the newer PSUs, you will not be sorry unless you have a freak of nature, nothing will help you there.

 

I would advise you don't open the PSU and contact Corsair and file for the warranty of the PSU and any damages caused too.

 

The issues you are having could be either failing parts like the SSD/HDD .and could be assessed component by component or the CMOS could just need to be cleared as some MOBO have surge protection built in, note that clearing the CMOS in a state such as this may cause even further errors and or failure or may just clear everything up for you. I would start with the disk drives then memory, you can run Samsung Magician/Smartmonotools to check the disks and do a windows memory diagnostic tool for the memory. If it were the GPU you would know right off as you would not get a picture or it would look like shit.

 

Do not worry about the games as you can DL them from steam once you have the sync my game activated. Your past game progress would be saved but i am not sure about the present one during your game play, that maybe lost,

[Jurrunio]

I saw youtube videos on some capacitors on a motherboard being blown up intentionally when PC is turned off, but the PC still works properly later. I would say the mobo might need some close inspection too.

[Nagaraj]

Check RAM, but some time faulty HDD passes test in SMART and crashes after several days, i faced same problem last month everything seems ok that movement but now,

hdd gone...

[manno]

56 minutes ago, Leonard said:

Nice first post, better than most.

lol thanks

57 minutes ago, Leonard said:

Well you will have to check the warranty of the surge protector to have an idea what you are actually covered for then call the belkin people and then have them let you know exactly what they will cover if anything at all. I would advise that you take pictures of all blown components to forward to belkin.

Thats a good idea. when they get back to me, I'll reply with a load of pics. I will need to open up the surge protector for them to see, but I'll make sure this is ok with them before proceeding.

 

58 minutes ago, Leonard said:

I doubt you will actually know what really caused it other than an electrician saying you got a surge, maybe the power company might give some insight if they are willing to be honest.

Next time get a line conditioner or preferably a UPS with pure sine wave for the newer PSUs, you will not be sorry unless you have a freak of nature, nothing will help you there.

 

I'm defo looking into better solutions once everything is fixed

 

59 minutes ago, Leonard said:

I would advise you don't open the PSU and contact Corsair and file for the warranty of the PSU and any damages caused too.

Noted. I'll contact them after I reply to this.. thanks

1 hour ago, Leonard said:

The issues you are having could be either failing parts like the SSD/HDD .and could be assessed component by component or the CMOS could just need to be cleared as some MOBO have surge protection built in, note that clearing the CMOS in a state such as this may cause even further errors and or failure or may just clear everything up for you. I would start with the disk drives then memory, you can run Samsung Magician/Smartmonotools to check the disks and do a windows memory diagnostic tool for the memory. If it were the GPU you would know right off as you would not get a picture or it would look like shit.

I've tried a few things with the HDD, but not samsung magician, I thought that was just a cloning tool. I'll run it now

 

I think clearning the CMOS will be a last resort thing.

 

Thanks for the advice. I think my next phase will be to diagnose the SSD/HDDs one by one. then move on to the scarier stuff!

 

[manno]

1 hour ago, Nagaraj said:

Check RAM, but some time faulty HDD passes test in SMART and crashes after several days, i faced same problem last month everything seems ok that movement but now,

hdd gone...

Yeah, I know SMART isn't brilliant. I may try some benchmark tests on them to see if they can cope. I'm also going to look into the RAM, but that'll be after I've ruled out the hdd/ssd's

 

thanks

[manno]

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

I saw youtube videos on some capacitors on a motherboard being blown up intentionally when PC is turned off, but the PC still works properly later. I would say the mobo might need some close inspection too.

I don't suppose you have a link?

[Leonard]

28 minutes ago, manno said:

 

I'm defo looking into better solutions once everything is fixed

 

Noted. I'll contact them after I reply to this.. thanks

I've tried a few things with the HDD, but not samsung magician, I thought that was just a cloning tool. I'll run it now

 

I think clearning the CMOS will be a last resort thing.

 

Thanks for the advice. I think my next phase will be to diagnose the SSD/HDDs one by one. then move on to the scarier stuff!

 

The Samsung Magician is for checking the HDDs/SDDs and a few other things but not clocning, cloning is for the Samsung Data Migration which is a different software.

 

You don't want to open anything unless the companies in question give some form of proof from a person in authority that they agree that you should because most of these companies representatives say one then then the head office says another, you should take the outside pictures for sure though. 

 

Yeah i feel the CMOS clearing should be done last and you should also run it by Belkin and Corsair just so that they know that other damages maybe done but just not showing as yet, they may say nothing will happen or that once it is working then it is not faulty but PC components  can be very fickle when it comes to electricity.

 

Sure thing on the advice and be patient you do not know how long this may take. 

 

Another thing, back up any data you need if you can in case the HDDs fail in the near future.

[manno]

5 minutes ago, Leonard said:

The Samsung Magician is for checking the HDDs/SDDs and a few other things but not clocning, cloning is for the Samsung Data Migration which is a different software.

 

You don't want to open anything unless the companies in question give some form of proof from a person in authority that they agree that you should because most of these companies representatives say one then then the head office says another, you should take the outside pictures for sure though. 

 

Yeah i feel the CMOS clearing should be done last and you should also run it by Belkin and Corsair just so that they know that other damages maybe done but just not showing as yet, they may say nothing will happen or that once it is working then it is not faulty but PC components  can be very fickle when it comes to electricity.

 

Sure thing on the advice and be patient you do not know how long this may take. 

 

Another thing, back up any data you need if you can in case the HDDs fail in the near future.

good call on opening them up. I'll make sure everyone gives me the go ahead before doing anything. 
I've got everything important on my gdrive so should be all good

[manno]

quick update:

while testing, I suddenly found myself with an almost totally dead PC, which couldn't switch on properly. Luckily, after much meddling, I managed to get it back on *phew*

 

anyway: I decided to focus on my SSD and memory this evening. with the SSD, I decided to do a chkdsk /f /r, which involes restarting the PC, and running the test outside of windows. This seems to freeze at 17% consistently. Interesting.

for the memory, I used memtest86+. this seems to get to test 10 or 11 before completely shutting down my PC.

 

so, not good so far...

 

right now I'm looking into exactly how much power my PC needs based on the components, while running some more memory/ssd tests. I've also got an older gfx card, which I'm going to use to rule out any issues with my rx480 when running games

[manno]

Update:

I ran a windows reset (basically, It deleted all apps but kept my files etc)

 

things seemed to be a little better for about 20 minutes, but when running a game to see how it was coping with that, it BSOD. not only that, but I'm getting a shit tonne of disk errors and warning in eventvwr.

 

one of them says "The IO operation at logical block address 0x4f1c9189 for Disk 1 (PDO name: \Device\00000031) failed due to a hardware error."

while another says "The IO operation at logical block address 0x32cd6d8 for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\00000030) was retried."

 

so this thing is showing multiple errors for multiple disks.

 

the question is: have I got 2 shagged disks, 1 shagged Motherboard, or both?