I was on Skype with a friend of mine about an hour ago during a heavy thunderstorm. When we were talking, we both heard a half-second long buzz. Nothing happened, and we went about our business. Then 5 minutes later, I heard the buzz again, only to have the power go out. It came back a split-second later, and the PC turned on (it was a short enough time that the motherboard was still in "on" position, I suppose). 15 seconds after that, and the power went dead, and this time, for a minute. I decided to turn off the PC and unplug the surge protector. The storms have died down an hour later, and i'm on the PC just fine. Is it possible that my PC sustained any damage from the outage? There were no weird smells or crackles coming from the PC after the power cut, and everything seems fine; but is it possible that there is some sort of hidden damage that may affect me in the future? I'm worried, as I spent $405 on this brand new PC last week. My video card is under double-lifetime warranty, but i'm not sure if my motherboard is. I personally wouldn't care if my power supply died, as that is rather expendable. Either way, I would absolutely hate to have any components replaced so soon. I've poured my heart and soul into this machine, and i'm worried that our delicate (which I absolutely hate, since it's 2009) power grids could/could've fried something which I have worked on so hard.
Well if it's working with no abnormalities, it sounds like you've managed to get away with it. You might want to invest in a UPS to protect your computer in thunderstorms later on though.
I remember me and my syblings managed to **** up a PC when we were younger by kicking out the power cable.
Spend all the money on a PC? Really, as Krikkit says get a UPS - even a small single one will hold up a PC long enough to shutdown properly - well may need a bigger one for Vista! Good insurance.
Your surge protector probably would have saved you from the worst, but yes a small UPS is the best protection.
yes you can damage your hardware from power outage. our pc we had before getting a laptop got its networking stuff messed up from a power outage. pc was working great. then we had a power outage and we couldnt connect to internet anymore after that. had to get a pci network card and ever since then the computer did not work proper. finally we got a laptop to replace it though. also, we had the computer on a surge protector. and after that happened we bought a UPS.
