Email today, small PC fire pics inside...
- Thread starter Emlyn_Dewar
- Start date
Interesting photo's not oftem you see boards on fire.
When I worked at my old company I had to replace a control board in one of our machines, put it in, connected up the cables turned the power back on, next thing the site engineer who was with me tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the board I put in with bellowing black smoke comming from it
powerd off quicky and quickly left site 
.
The other replacement worked fine.
When I worked at my old company I had to replace a control board in one of our machines, put it in, connected up the cables turned the power back on, next thing the site engineer who was with me tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the board I put in with bellowing black smoke comming from it
powerd off quicky and quickly left site . The other replacement worked fine.
I reckon its the cables leaning against the graphics card. One of my ols pcs I have a few harddisks in and a load of fans, but one of the fans cables sat right on a harddisk and the cable casing melted, the wires touched the metal, instant flames. For someone who never goes in a pc (which it looks like from all that dust) if there was smoke coming from the machine they wouldnt rip it open and put it out like we would, they'd just call someone and the fire could spread.
I've shorted a USB connector before and it burnt, it's very likely one of the USB pins touched, shorted and burnt causing neighbouring cables/components to pop too.
It's easy to bend the pins too, just shove a USB device into the socket the wrong way a few times and it can happen or shove the wrong device into a USB port...
It's easy to bend the pins too, just shove a USB device into the socket the wrong way a few times and it can happen or shove the wrong device into a USB port...
Wow, never seen anything like that before
Lol! whats the link?
Theres a funny website with pics of hardware failures and stupid things people have done with pc's cant remember the link now though
Lol! whats the link?
Graphics card was below it so could have been also that... but as graphics card doesn't really have there much combustible materials USB connector/cable looks more probable.Looks like the USB header could have shorted!
Jonnyguru had page of them earlier but it disappeared from web year or two ago.Theres a funny website with pics of hardware failures and stupid things people have done with pc's cant remember the link now though
So we have just some version in web archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061107015634/http://www.jonnyguru.com/mishaps/
http://web.archive.org/web/20040406194616/www.webhelp.org/jonnyguru/mishaps/index.htm
And some reading.
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_smoke.shtml
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lol thats one of the cleanest pc's I've ever seen! You should see the insides of some of the ex enterprise p4 machines I've bought recently - I like to think of the dust as a nice comfy blanket keeping everything warm when the powers off
None of them ever caught fire thankfully, some even ran 24/7. I'd wager the likelihood of dust reachng flash point on a working board as pretty much nill. Components that do get hot tend like the psu have a fan bloeing the dust out so it accumaltes in the case.
Now if there was a short, melting plastic cable shrouds then touching live wires.. that'd do it.
None of them ever caught fire thankfully, some even ran 24/7. I'd wager the likelihood of dust reachng flash point on a working board as pretty much nill. Components that do get hot tend like the psu have a fan bloeing the dust out so it accumaltes in the case.
Now if there was a short, melting plastic cable shrouds then touching live wires.. that'd do it.
This. I've had a cap inside a power supply blow. That shorted the mains. The over-current breaker on my UPS tripped and cut power before any damage could be done - though the plug fuse blew at the same time so that would have had the same result.
Never even thought about cable chafing when I've done PC builds - cabling inside most of my PCs is a complete mess. Oh, one of my PCs had a completely blocked air filter with no ill effects so I doubt it was dust.
It looks a little like it may have started on the video card, as there is what looks like a blown cap towards the back of it (near the chips on the underside).
I had an NIC catch fire once, my dad was using it when a capacitor blew and caught fire*, fortunately as it was attended at the time it was turned of in seconds, and apart from a scorched PCI slot, and a very dead NIC.
IIRC one of the lesser reasons for the computer cases being metal is in part because if something goes catastrophically wrong the metal case should in theory help prevent any fire from spreading outside of the case (and certainly not fuel any fire).
*He was playing UO when it froze and there was a horrible smell
I had an NIC catch fire once, my dad was using it when a capacitor blew and caught fire*, fortunately as it was attended at the time it was turned of in seconds, and apart from a scorched PCI slot, and a very dead NIC.
IIRC one of the lesser reasons for the computer cases being metal is in part because if something goes catastrophically wrong the metal case should in theory help prevent any fire from spreading outside of the case (and certainly not fuel any fire).
*He was playing UO when it froze and there was a horrible smell
Hmm, I've plugged a floppy drive connector on the wrong way round before (even though it shouldn't fit!) and upon switching on insta burning smell. Turned it off straight away but it had fused the plug to the floppy and also fused the wires on the psu's floppy cable and 2 of the molex ones 
I snipped them on at psu end with some wire cutters and continued to use the pc (minus a fdd 
)
Doesn't look one of the cables has shorted in those pics, they all appeared to be burned from the outside, so I'm guessing something blew on the GFX card.
I snipped them on at psu end with some wire cutters and continued to use the pc (minus a fdd )Doesn't look one of the cables has shorted in those pics, they all appeared to be burned from the outside, so I'm guessing something blew on the GFX card.