Group Actions
Engagement
  • Author Author: Problemchild
  • Date Created: Date Created
  • Views 999 views
  • Likes 3 likes
  • Comments 6 comments
Related
Recommended

Burn Baby Burn-PC Inferno!!

Problemchild

Just a quicky here. For the last couple of weeks I could smell an acrid burning smell in my office on occasion but since I'd had a cold and my sense of smell was stuffed I was putting it down to the high roast coffee. This week and a better nose repeated the exercise but then it went away so again put it down to paranoia.

However the next day started with a nice wisp of smoke so convinced it was the PSU of my desktop I ripped the lump out and stuck it on my desk, took it apart and again no remnant of the smell! I then powered it up to find the smoke was in fact coming from the cable harness "tray" these cases have for cable management  after taking the back off I found this little bugger:

 

image

 

The cheap CPU power extension seems to have had a bad crimp or similar and this is the result ...One charred mess!

 

Moral to the story, don't know I've use off brand cables before no problem, maybe it's always follow your nose..Where there's smoke there is indeed fire !

Parents

  • On high current medical equipment like sterilizers I have seen the fuses for the mains create enough heat in their clips, to melt the solder holding the clips to the board and then arc between the clips and the solder trace to burn a hole in the PCB. The heat takes the temper out of the metal which in turn makes the connection worse. It is a downward spiral to failure. There is nothing my nose is more sensitive to than carmelized circuit board unless it is a failed selenium rectifier.

    John

Comment

  • On high current medical equipment like sterilizers I have seen the fuses for the mains create enough heat in their clips, to melt the solder holding the clips to the board and then arc between the clips and the solder trace to burn a hole in the PCB. The heat takes the temper out of the metal which in turn makes the connection worse. It is a downward spiral to failure. There is nothing my nose is more sensitive to than carmelized circuit board unless it is a failed selenium rectifier.

    John

Children