Computer repair after power surge

Is that even possible?  There seems to be some questions about that with a few friends of mine.  We’ve been talking about this and I thought I’d would bring you along for the ride.   If you didn’t have a Uninterruptable Power supply(UPS)(Amazon Affiliate Link), then maybe it is time to buy one. See my affiliate link of all the possible UPS that Amazon has.  The problem with some computers is that they have so many things that could happen that you might not really know what could of been hit.  I’m going to walk through some possible areas where to look for burns and or shorts in the system to possible know what you might need to do to get your system back up.  Be advised this is only a way to tell what might be the problem and it may be worse than you can know just by looking and seeing.

Power Supply

The first place I always look is at the Power supply.  Since that is where electricity is designed to go to.  If you push the start button and the power supply doesn’t even turn on, than you might have a blown power supply.  You can however check the motherboard and memory but I usually check the PSU when I suspect the power supply might of gotten hit by lighting or a surge in the system.   The PSU does have a fuse inside it that might of blown.   That is usually something you will not be able to get at.   However if you have another PSU you can use to plug into the system than you might be able to know if the PSU is the issue in the first place.  Do you need a new PSU, why not check out my Amazon Affiliate link and see if you can find another one  for your needs.

Depending on your system setup

If you suspect that it was from your LAN(Local area network) network that you got the power surge, than I would start looking inside the computer around the LAN connection.   Some people use WIFI and it will not cause any problems but if you use a LAN cord to connect to the internet that is the next place to look at to make sure it’s not burned or any black areas around the connection.  If that’s the case the Motherboard will most like need to be replaced but that is if nothing else works.   You’ll probably need to buy a CPU and motherboard and depending on your setup the GPU.   If the GPU was close to the LAN, than that might need to be replaced too.  With the high prices of GPU’s this could get really expensive really fast.  However if the system turns on and still refuses to post without errors, you could  always try to problem solve the motherboard issue before you switch it out.    Even my Gigabyte b450m ds3h(Amazon Affiliate Link) motherboard wouldn’t be to hard to replace if I had to but I would have to buy another i9 LGA 1200 CPU which would cost a lot.

Motherboard powers on

If the motherboard powers on and you’ve done the problem solving for the motherboard.  The last thing I usually try is to remove everything possible besides the CPU and one stick of RAM to verify that there isn’t anything that might not be working.   If you do that and it boots then it’s either the RAM(Random Access Memory) or the GPU (Graphics Processing UNIT) if it has one in the first place.  If however you get the CMOS or CPU FAIL error than the motherboard or the CPU is bad and at that point the only good option is to replace the motherboard and everything else associated with it.   You can however try to use the CPU and memory on a new motherboard if you want to know if they are good but I usually just replace it completely because you never know when those other parts will fail and than you will still have repair and upgrade the system at the same time.   You probably won’t be able to find the same CPU again unless you buy it second hand.

Well these are the area’s I usually look at when I suspect either a power surge or a lightning strike has just happened and my system won’t boot or even start due it.   If it happened to you, I feel sorry for you but you should either invest in a UPS or a extension cord that has a circuit breaker to prevent you system from being fried.

Did it happen to you?  How did you handle it or was it worse than you thought?  I’d love to hear how you solved your issues and what it was like to have those issues.  Why not leave a comment and talk about it.   Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter and receive notifications when I post new content.