Not sure what happened

the_darjeeling · 8 May 2014 at 13:10

Hi

A minute ago all the lights flickerd for a second and everything seemed to turn off, when I rushed upstairs to check the pc expecting it to be rebooting it was still on, anticipating that there would be more power surges I then shut it down normally without a problem. Since there's not been any more surges am I safe to turn it back on? or is the fact it stayed on indicative of a psu fault?

Thanks

hughtrimble · 8 May 2014 at 13:15

The same happened with an old Dell desktop in my house a few months back - momentary household lighting off (not sure about other appliances e.g. fridges) and then back on. Nothing tripped out.

The PC didn't shut off, which I assumed was just 'residual power' without any actual expertise to say why, when I think about it.

I'd be interested to know what responses you get.

Rilot · 8 May 2014 at 16:57

PC PSUs have all sorts of smoothing capacitors in them so that they don't blow up with small power spikes etc. If we get a flicker on the power here my PC will stay running 9 times out of 10.

infernox · 9 May 2014 at 10:50

It will have keep alive capacitors. My house had a dip last year and my pc stayed on when everything else went off. I'm guessing there only rated for like .1 second worth of dip but yeah. it comes in handy.