power cable burned,... twice...

[Nikolas]

Hi!

A few questions for you, if you don't mind, since I find something happening twice a bit bizzare...

In my tiny room, I have around 15 plugs in all. Not all in use all the time, most of the time, but some times it does happen. 2 amps, 1 printer, 1 monitor, 1 CPU, 1 hi-fi, 1 keyboards, 1 USB drive, blah blah.

Now, about a month ago, I had to go out of the room for a neighboor to use a telephone socket. All is well, she's done it before, we trust her. She leaves the room and the Computer is closed! No way of opening. After a few attempts and in a desperate attempt to find a solution, I take the plug FROM the printer and INTO the computer. It works! The power cable was burned! :O

Now today I left out and left the computer running with adaware... All is well. When I came back, same thing. Tried the cables, the power cable to the computer was burned!

At least I have everything backed up, last night, not much to loose except a computer maybe...

I also have this protected sockets USB or whatever they're called, for the main plugs, the computer, the monitor, the usb drive... But it didn't seem to do it's work.

What on earth is causing my cables to burn?

Under these circumstances I'm considering my self ultra lucky! Better a cable even than anything else inside the computer!

But really, WTF?

Any ideas if this will keep happening? So I can stock 10 power cables and get it over with? Or maybe the electrical surge might increase, even with the protected plugs and beep my computer?

[LimpingFish]

That is odd. When you say "burned", you mean the fuse in the plug itself has blown, or is the actual power cable undergoing some weird meltdown?

If it's the fuse in the plug, then I'd say the surge protected extension you are using is overloading, causing the fuse to blow. Because it only seems to be happening with the power cable to the PC itself, this could be down to the PC being the component that sucks up the most electricity/higher voltage/whatever.

I'd say change the extension itself, though my knowledge of electricity is limited.

[Emerald]

Are you using a transformer?

I notice that the power plug to my American laptop gets really hot if you leave it on too long (though it's never burnt itself out...) - which is probably due to the voltage mis-match. I also had an American toaster that damn near exploded when I tried to use it here...

[ryanlandry]

The amount of items plugged in to wall sockets/extension/etc. shouldn't matter here, but the amount of components plugged into your computer might (including PCI/AGP cards, multiple hard drives, multiple optical drives, etc.). If your computer is drawing more current than the PSU can give it, it can fry the cable and/or eventually the PSU or any other component inside the PC.

[Nikolas]

when I say burned I mean it stoped working. It doesn't work anymore. No smoke, or anything else.

I don't use a transformer.

And the setup of my computer has been the same since August, when I added my soundcard. 2 hard disks and that's all pretty much.

But I am worried as you can understand since it's not a good time to start looking to buy a new computer... not a financially sane move right now for me...

But thanks for the interest. And fish, indeed I think I might do that, although I've had other trouble with electricity before the extention, which lead me to get the ups in the first place.

[shbaz]

I'm not familiar at all with your power cords and etc over there, but if it's fused I may know your problem.

Desktop computer power supplies are notorious for having cheap capacitors inside of them, and if one of them happens to malfunction it will explode and cause the power supply to stop functioning, or if it's fused (which it never is here) it could blow the fuse.

I suspect your cable is fused because if it actually burned the insulation would melt, and that would be quite a current draw, enough to blow your breakers/fuses in your house.

If you have any electrical meters measure the amperage that's passing through, if you don't try swapping to a bigger power supply.  Don't leave it unattended anymore if you don't want your home to burn.