Power Supply sparked and banged

[Dougiebabe2003]

So yesterday I took my rig into work to setup a VR room in a seminar room, plugged everything into the PC flipped the power switch on the PSU and then proceeded to turn the power onto the PC, everything seemed fine. Fans started spinning up along with HDD's and then about 1 sec later one of the loudest sounds I've heard in my life along with a bright flash of white/purple light jumped out of the PSU!

The thing is the PC continued to boot, beeped about 1 sec later and on came the screen. I was scared to stay the least but carried on booting, logged in and ran some stress testing but all was fine. I didn't switch it off for fear of it not coming back on, did the VR evening and then it's been off ever since.

The PSU is a Corsair HX620w and is quite old now, brought second hand in Feb of 2008, and has seen a Q6600 overclocked along with high end single cards and dual cards for times while mining or other distributed computing tasks and is now running the PC in my sig, again with dual 280x's at times, so I don't feel like I've been easy on it during it's life with me!

I've ordered an EVGA P2 750w as a replacement due to the good reviews it seems to have across the board. 750w might be a bit overkill for when I'm running a single card but if I decide on dual cards again, if they get dual cards working well in VR, then it might be needed.

So question, can anyone take a guess at why it did this? I'm not sure if the moving around has maybe dislodged something and it arc'd? Something feel into the PSU and caused it to arc? It didn't like being moved and disturbed the balance of the force? Or could it just be that it was dying anyway and the moving around into the car, in the car and out of the car might have just finished it off? If I got the case off the PSU how easy would it be to find the bit that went bang? Only for science though, no interest in trying to fix it.

 

[topgun06]

I doubt it would be anything to do with moving it. They're not that fragile. And the HX620 would have been mounted with the fan grill facing down reducing the risk of anything falling in. I dunno, it was probably just on the way out anyway.

Take it to pieces and look for damage/dark areas on the components.

 

[Holst1981]

Probably had a capacitor blow.
They can make quite a bang if they short out internally and go bang.

I guess the cap that blew was filtering so although the psu still works it might have poor quality output.
You could get it repaired but a new one may be easier.

 

[Borealis]

If it went bang, then most likely a capacitor blew. If it was second hand in 2008, then you've got a lot of use out of it. I would guess that component aging meant that eventually it let go. Once you've got the cover off, look for anything that's bulged, or if it's really gone bang, stuff that's exploded or blackened.

Be careful taking it apart. Capacitors can take a long time to naturally discharge, especially the big ones. Getting a shock off a big one is not pleasant - been there, done that as an electronics student.

 

[cadmunkey]

Kudos for carrying on with the VR evening like nothing happened

 

[V F]

If it went bang, then most likely a capacitor blew. If it was second hand in 2008, then you've got a lot of use out of it. I would guess that component aging meant that eventually it let go. Once you've got the cover off, look for anything that's bulged, or if it's really gone bang, stuff that's exploded or blackened.

Be careful taking it apart. Capacitors can take a long time to naturally discharge, especially the big ones. Getting a shock off a big one is not pleasant - been there, done that as an electronics student.

Any twitches?

 

[Borealis]

Nope, just startling and somewhat painful.

 

[ak22]

You actually left the pc on and did the VR evening I would have dived for plug lol.

I would just buy a new psu instead of tying to fix it.

 

[Borealis]

The OP has bought a new PSU. He's just interested in opening up the dead one to see what went wrong.