Possible to blow up your pc? I mean explode!

A friends mobo went bang, every capacitor apparently blew or something. nothing on his part but someone drove into the streets power regulator thingy (the magical box of wizardry at the end of your street etc) and sent a big power surge down the street and popped his pc and a few other things on the way. from then on he doesnt use anything what isnt surge protected yadda yadda.

another friend did the clasic "hmm my pc doesnt reboot properly i wonder if i change the switch on the back of the psu to the american standard it might work"....
 
People make overclocking sound like over rev'ing a car. The BIOS is pretty protective now days over it's components so although it's possible to blow a few chips, it's pretty unlikely.

That said, it's firework night soon. Old PCs are great for mortars.
 
i ve only had a powersupply but it didn't go bang more of a "pop" than a puff of smoke :p and quite a lot of sparks and fire
 
I had a brand spanking new seasonic s12 psu go pop the first time i turned it on, took out the mobo and ram into the bargain.
 
pcb's dont actually take in lots of power, as peeps have mentioned, only real thing that can go pop is power supplies cd rom/dvd roms and probably graphic cards. cpu would probably give you a few sparks and a toilet "fart noise". Although if you search youtube you might find a few geeks trying deliberately to make things go bang.
 
Hmm?

I can arrange about 60KV at low amps but I'm telling you it's hardly worth it if you want SFX, things will spark but merely because 60KV will jump dam near any kind of insulation in computer components.

What you want is relatively high voltage and high current potential.

A capacitor bank is the ideal starting point to getting things to blow apart.

Merely assembling one from multiple disposable flash cameras will get you something easily enough to cause any computer component to react as if slammed with a hammer. I have one around which holds 1180uf @ 350V...

Thin connections vaporise, semiconductors break down and cry and brittle packaging on components turns into shrapnel.

Can't be bothered doing that on purpose much, waste of good components usually.
 
rexehuk said:
Only time my PC has actually "exploded" was when my CD drive blew up. Lucky I wasn't near it as it sprayed components and CD shrapnel across my room, destroyed my poor Project IGI game :(
Click to expand...

You were indeed lucky that you weren't in close proximity to it, could have very well been quite serious.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom