Just had a power supply cascade failure take out three workstations in one day

Last Tuesday I walked into a client's small office in Des Moines and found three machines completely dead. They said the lights flickered a few times the night before. I assumed it was just a surge issue, maybe a blown PSU on one unit. But when I opened them up, every single power supply had leaked capacitor fluid onto the motherboards. The damage was way past a simple swap. I spent the whole day pulling drives for data recovery and ordering replacement parts. Turns out that old building has bad wiring and the neutral line was loose at the panel. I'm guessing the voltage spikes just kept hitting those cheap PSUs until they gave out. Has anyone else seen a whole batch fail like that from a single electrical issue?

3 comments

3 Comments

jessica9217d ago

Loose neutral at the panel"? Wait, you mean the building itself was cooking those PSUs from the inside out? That's genuinely terrifying, lmao I would've lost my mind finding that after a full day of data recovery.

bailey.jennifer7d ago

Wait, is that right about capacitor fluid leaking? I mean, maybe it's just me but I thought bad capacitors usually bulge or pop the top, not actually leak fluid all over the place. Idk, I've seen a few dead PSUs in my time and the electrolytic stuff is usually sealed pretty tight unless they literally explode. A loose neutral can definitely send voltage spikes though, those cheap units probably just couldn't handle the repeated hits. I'd bet the capacitors failed internally and the boards got cooked from the inside out, but the fluid part sounds off. Still a horrible way to start a Tuesday though, having to pull drives from three dead machines at once.

kai_chen27d ago

Blew a laugh out my nose reading this. Sounds like those poor PSUs cooked themselves into little capacitor soup kitchens. Probably worked better as a chemistry experiment than power supplies at that point. I mean, what a way to start a Tuesday, right?