[QUOTE=Killerelf12;34772087]You seriously underestimate the power of electricity. I blew a hole in a pair of pliers when I accidentally cut the power cord to an alarm clock radio, something that'd be drawing much less power than a PSU.[/QUOTE]
Yeah I underestimate the power of electricity :downs: Oh wait, no I don't because I've built switching and linear power supplies before, and repaired dozens and dozens of them; I know how they work.
I don't know how you managed to cut a power cord with pliers in the first place, unless you weren't looking when you tried to bite down on something. And the aftermath of your little accident should have alerted you to your house/apartment not being wired correctly. When you put an infinite load on the line like that, your circuit breaker should immediately trip, the fact that it didn't means that either there is improper wall wiring, the breaker is faulty or the wrong type of breaker is installed.
[QUOTE=Demache;34772637]Still, capacitors in PSU's can hold lethal amounts of electricity, so I could imagine them being very dangerous if they explode.[/QUOTE]
ITT: People who don't know anything about electronics and think PSUs are hocus pocus.
First, capacitors are NOT batteries. Capacitors do not store charges, they are externally energized. Once a capacitor is energized, it wants to lose that charge as quickly as possible.
Second, capacitors primarily store voltage, they do not store large amperages like batteries can. Once a capacitor is removed from a power source, the only thing that's left is the operating voltage (which is always less than what's printed on the capacitor) with a TINY charge that can barely be measured in micro amps. I've been shocked by a 450v line capacitor freshly removed from a circuit that had a working voltage of 277v and it felt like a static shock you get from a door knob in winter.
Capacitors in-circuit also do not store lethal amounts of current. What you'd be electrocuted by is the upstream bridge rectifier (or if you were dumb enough to touch the primary FETs, the 345v+ DC they produce.) And in practice, it's impossible to even touch the leads of the line filter caps since they're located under the PCB with only a few mm to spare.
Thirdly, all electrolytic capacitors have two safety features to prevent detonation from either improper operation or some failure condition. The first is the printed vent on the top (usually an X or a K) which will crack and allow venting, and the second is the rubber plug on the bottom which will push out if the top fails. They can still explode if they have extreme abrupt overvoltage, but the force at which they explode is not enough to bow out a steel PSU enclosure or even punch holes in it.
[QUOTE=pure.Joseph;34782270]I would unplug your pc until it gets checked out then.
That's probably a big sign as to why your PSU may have fried. Most PSU's have active PFC in them, but I'm still worried about spiking voltages from the standard 120V. ( I'm assuming you live in the US )[/QUOTE]
Haha, do you even know what PFC is? It stands for Power Factor Correction, which is a relationship between the real power flowing to the load and the apparent power in the circuit (PSU.) It has absolutely nothing to do with circuit protection and PFC (passive or active) exists to make the PSU more efficient at converting AC power to DC power.
[QUOTE=bohb;34784291]Haha, do you even know what PFC is? It stands for Power Factor Correction, which is a relationship between the real power flowing to the load and the apparent power in the circuit (PSU.) It has absolutely nothing to do with circuit protection and PFC (passive or active) exists to make the PSU more efficient at converting AC power to DC power.[/QUOTE]
Yes I know what PFC is. OP said he didn't know what the input voltage was, so I mentioned PFC ( all PFC psu's auto-sense the input voltage, thus not needing to set the voltage 120/240 on older PSU's without PFC )
[QUOTE=SataniX;34774464]if u bother u should be able to type you[/QUOTE]
Dude, it's nowhere NEAR as bad as some of the fucktards I had to fight through translating when I was moderating G4's Cops 2.0 chat.
I had kids dropping every almost every vowel in every word of the English language they tried to use, assuming they could even spell them right with the vowels in the first place.
U can live with one guy dropping the "yo".
no. fuck off.
edit:
okay fine. you get 2 of my fucks.
2.
but really, that's the nicest thing i have ever seen someone do computer wise... actually nicest thing overall...
What the hell is going on in here
I don't know anymore.
It got all derailed by senseless arguing or something.
[editline]22nd February 2012[/editline]
[video=youtube;8P-NjAbyIEM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-NjAbyIEM&list=UUvrcnAlLZhuSPrV83vr5tKw&index=1&feature=plcp[/video]
[QUOTE=bohb;34784291]Yeah I underestimate the power of electricity :downs: Oh wait, no I don't because I've built switching and linear power supplies before, and repaired dozens and dozens of them; I know how they work.
I don't know how you managed to cut a power cord with pliers in the first place, unless you weren't looking when you tried to bite down on something. And the aftermath of your little accident should have alerted you to your house/apartment not being wired correctly. When you put an infinite load on the line like that, your circuit breaker should immediately trip, the fact that it didn't means that either there is improper wall wiring, the breaker is faulty or the wrong type of breaker is installed.[/quote]
I was trying to cut drag line I'd used to tie the wires up, the cord managed to slip down as I squeezed on the pliers. Also, this was on a construction site, power was coming from the temporary lighting line, the load I would've been putting there wouldn't have come close to what was being pulled by the however many 100W bulbs are on the line.
Since you know a lot about electricity, you'd know that caps aren't the only things that can blow up in there. A lot of energy is going through a PSU, yes, it'd have to be a pretty damn shitty one to blow up like that, but I wouldn't say it was totally impossible.
[QUOTE=Killerelf12;34772087]You seriously underestimate the power of electricity. I blew a hole in a pair of pliers when I accidentally cut the power cord to an alarm clock radio, something that'd be drawing much less power than a PSU.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Killerelf12;34774363]And mains power goes into a PSU. However, a radio wouldn't draw anywhere near the amount of current a PSU at 300W would.[/QUOTE]
except the amount of current it's drawing doesn't matter at all because you cut the cable and shorted it. It's going to draw as much as the power source allows you to before the breaker trips.
I have a 7600GT with an aftermarket Zalman copper/aluminum hybrid cooler on it I'm thinking of giving away. But the last time I shipped a graphics card, it went to Australia, and cost me $60 just for shipping.
:nope.avi:
[QUOTE=Killerelf12;34834994]I was trying to cut drag line I'd used to tie the wires up, the cord managed to slip down as I squeezed on the pliers. Also, this was on a construction site, power was coming from the temporary lighting line, the load I would've been putting there wouldn't have come close to what was being pulled by the however many 100W bulbs are on the line.[/QUOTE]
A properly built light string shouldn't have more than 6-8 bulbs on it (600-800W) since it would be a fire hazard. But shorting pliers across a hot and a neutral (or ground) is an infinite load since the pliers provide almost no resistance to current flow. The brief amount of current used to bite a hole in the pliers would be 1000x more than any string of 100W light bulbs.
[QUOTE=Killerelf12;34834994]Since you know a lot about electricity, you'd know that caps aren't the only things that can blow up in there. A lot of energy is going through a PSU, yes, it'd have to be a pretty damn shitty one to blow up like that, but I wouldn't say it was totally impossible.[/QUOTE]
It entirely depends on the load on the PSU as to how much current is flowing through it at any given time. PWM circuits in a feedback loop will dynamically adjust the output current of the MOSFETs in the PSU. But even under maximum load, there are only a few things that will burn or explode (MOSFETs, resistors, diodes, transistors are most common) since high current moves in a linear line through the PSU from the bridge rectifier to the output capacitors.
I've seen dozens of catastrophic PSU failures (and electronics failures in general) and none of those parts are powerful enough when they explode to bow out a PSU enclosure.
[QUOTE=P320;34839332]I have a 7600GT with an aftermarket Zalman copper/aluminum hybrid cooler on it I'm thinking of giving away. But the last time I shipped a graphics card, it went to Australia, and cost me $60 just for shipping.
:nope.avi:[/QUOTE]
If you use USPS it should have been no more than $20 unless you used a more expensive option.
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