Fried Motherboard or Power Supply?
Last night we had a hell of a lot of storms come through the area. A guy called me up this evening after his experiences with a client that had had his facility struck by lightning. The storm fried everything: parking lot lights, alarm systems and even a computer.
Now, this computer was on a surge protector, but it failed to start. A light came on on the motherboard, but no fan or other signal of life.
He asked me my opinion: is it the motherboard or is it the power supply? My answer: The power supply.
Of course, this is really only a guess but it is a highly educated and 90% likely most accurate assessment. The reason?
There was power getting to the motherboard as the green indicator light was on. The power supply was definitely not totally fried. Possibly degraded, but not dead.
If a lightning bolt struck a nearby power generator or light pole sending a surge upstream to the peripherals that were plugged in (read: the PC), it would either fry the power supply or not fry the power supply. There would be no power degradation. In my experience.
Furthermore, if the power supply was merely degraded and the motherboard was okay, there would likely be some kind of power up, some kind of POST, etc.
However, if the motherboard was fried (more likely as it is sensitive to electrostatic shock), there would be no POST whatsoever (also consistent with a dead power supply as there would be no power) but there might still be a LED lit.
He won’t really know what is up until he tests the voltage of the power supply, but the symptoms seem to indicate a motherboard replacement in the near future.
1 opinion for Fried Motherboard or Power Supply?
bobbo
Oct 16, 2007 at 6:54 am
I had a power spike or maybe “just” a failed power supply. It took out the power supply, two sticks of ram ((visual inspection showed two black burn marks coming thru the warranty stickers)) and a fried hard drive. I replace the power supply–no need to check voltage, if it doesn’t come on, replace it. I also found same model hard drive and replaced its circuit board. All the data was there and I’m still using it 4 years later.
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