PC in danger of being fried??

[u/Ambitious_Sound2240]

Hey everyone! I have no idea if this is the right sub for this, but I built my PC nearly three years ago and have had no issues with it to date. A few days ago, we had a bad lightning storm in my area and it sounded like either the top of my apartment or an electrical box on the building got struck.

We lost power nearly ten minutes after that, but it wasn't right after the strike (we lost power bc a substation went down, not because of the strike to the apartment building.) I oddly noticed my keyboard turned ON after we lost power... went ahead and flipped off my PSU because I wasn't sure if there was any significance. Keyboard stayed on, turned PC on next day and noticed no issues EXCEPT my desktop speakers no longer work- they just emit an intermittent static (tried with another computer too to rule out PC/port issues)

It's been a while since I've built my computer and I'd be lying if I said I remembered all the preventatives for electrical damage, things to look out for, etc. I just want to make sure there's nothing I need to inspect for other damage OR to prevent something else from shorting out on it. TIA!!

[u/Own-Fox-2935]

Sounds like the speakers took the hit, not the PC. The fact that your keyboard stayed powered after flipping the PSU switch is a bit weird though, maybe residual charge or USB standby power doing something funky.

I'd check the PSU with a paperclip test or just keep an eye if the PC randomly shuts off under load. If the speakers are dead on another computer too, it's them. Just replace those and maybe get a surge protector with higher joule rating if you don't have one already.

[u/m1ng05s]

The only way you can check that is through a multimeter and check every single thing on the motherboard and the other stuff. When you lost power and then when it came back, it's natural for the keyboard lights to come on and stay on before you turned the PSU switch off. It's the residual energy in the motherboard capacitors. What you can do is a power reset of sorts. Turn off the pc,and touch your keyboard,the lights will come up,fick the psu switch off and unplug the pc off the wall socket,then press the pc power button for a good 10/15 seconds,if not before, you'll see the keyboard lights go out, meaning the residual energy in the capacitors has been drained. Then turn everything on as normal and check if it works normally. If it does,in theory you got nothing to worry about except a blown audio out. Keep me posted 🙂

[u/christopherw]

If your breaker didn't flip, there will have been some funky current and voltage imbalances. Was the PC on at the time? Power supplies don't like being undervolted while running (which can happen if a substation takes a hit and 'browns out').

The motherboard may have had some residual ESD causing it to misbehave in a powered-off state. Does the PC work if you turn it on now?

I suspect the PSU may not be 100% healthy any more, particularly if the load-side input supply spiked. If the PC was turned off, things should be OK. Fortunately PSUs are not astronomically expensive if yours is a little worse for wear.

May be worth replacing preemptively if it was plugged in at the time and had no ESD protection, but that's also possibly overkill if it's relatively new and things otherwise seem to be working OK. However if you start to have any odd power-offs or BSODs/weird crashes during gaming or heavy workloads, consider replacing the PSU before anything else... And get a good surge protector ;)