PC + Lightning = Death

[LordShotGun]

Help! Yesterday a large thunderstorm rolled through my area (Southern Florida). Unfortunately a bolt of lightning directly hit my house (I got the scorch marks and cracked windows to prove it) and damaged my PC.

I took my tower to Best Buy and had geek squad check out my power supply. They plugged in another power supply via clips/plugs and they said it was a no go and the motherboard was probably fried as well, but that the RAM and graphics card looked fine and the hard drive could be fine as well. I am tempted to believe them but I can find no evidence of scorch marks or burnt pieces anywhere.

Wishful thinking here, but should I go an get my PC checked out again at a smaller, more personal PC repair store, or should I just give up?

If things are hopeless, would anyone recommend a place to build a PC, and is it possible to get some partial pieces that I could then install my current salvageable equipment.

I am primarily a software kinda guy but I have upgraded various simple parts and pieces of hardware before, like ram sticks, graphic cards, and wireless antenna. If there is a possibility of just replacing the motherboard + power supply I could perhaps walk myself through it. Granted you will probably need to know what motherboard I am currently using.

I am currently at work (on lunch of course) but when I get home I will open up my PC case and get more detailed information concerning my Graphics card, my motherboard, my RAM and hard drive which I will post tomorrow.

Starving college kid here, I can't really afford a brand new rig. This current rig I use was 450$ but I got custom built on a newegg cyber monday sale for something like 75% off.

[Illieas]

Getting money:
well first see if you have home insurance. see if lightning storm is covered or not. Then make a claim and get some money back minus deductable. Then see if this fall under surge protectors warrenty. see if you can get money there.

assess damage:

First take detailed pictures of your PC.

I would first recommend you figure out what components are useable. Take out the graphics card, ram, hard drive, and DVD player. Find a friends computer. Stick them in and see of they work. Otherwise make friends with the IT guys in your college and see if you can use their stuff to figure out if your stuff works. Generally they are nice bunch, sadly they would be busy this time of year(damn freshmen). Play out your story and they generally will be willing to help. or look for computer club. Last option is a store to test what components works.
THe processor is the hardest to get to and see if it is working. I would recommend if you don't feel confident to have it tested out at a shop.

Choice time:
Then it is time figure out if you want to sell what you have in pieces on craigs list or try to forge on with what you have still alive.

Build it:
The hope is that your mother board only got fried and each individual piece is fine. figure out what your mother board you used buy it on new egg or other distributor. follow manual and pictures you took to make sure everything goes where it should. Processor needs to be held on the sides not bottom. seat it correctly. apply thermal paste on top and then apply heat sink. Boot up hope for the best. google problems follow instruction repeat. also youtube has instructional how to build pc vids

otherwise slick deal generally is pretty good to find discount on stuff.

[Olinser]

Help! Yesterday a large thunderstorm rolled through my area (Southern Florida). Unfortunately a bolt of lightning directly hit my house (I got the scorch marks and cracked windows to prove it) and damaged my PC.

I took my tower to Best Buy and had geek squad check out my power supply. They plugged in another power supply via clips/plugs and they said it was a no go and the motherboard was probably fried as well, but that the RAM and graphics card looked fine and the hard drive could be fine as well. I am tempted to believe them but I can find no evidence of scorch marks or burnt pieces anywhere.

Wishful thinking here, but should I go an get my PC checked out again at a smaller, more personal PC repair store, or should I just give up?

If things are hopeless, would anyone recommend a place to build a PC, and is it possible to get some partial pieces that I could then install my current salvageable equipment.

I am primarily a software kinda guy but I have upgraded various simple parts and pieces of hardware before, like ram sticks, graphic cards, and wireless antenna. If there is a possibility of just replacing the motherboard + power supply I could perhaps walk myself through it. Granted you will probably need to know what motherboard I am currently using.

I am currently at work (on lunch of course) but when I get home I will open up my PC case and get more detailed information concerning my Graphics card, my motherboard, my RAM and hard drive which I will post tomorrow.

Starving college kid here, I can't really afford a brand new rig. This current rig I use was 450$ but I got custom built on a newegg cyber monday sale for something like 75% off.

Regarding getting help from somebody - I know a couple guys that might be able to help you, but to remotely troubleshoot something like that would take probably DAYS of time. Unless you can find somebody near you that can physically inspect the computer I don't think a remote troubleshoot is going to help with the damage that I presume was done. You really need somebody to poke around inside and test everything.

I don't know what size town you live in or how many options you have, but I would highly recommend going to a smaller store that actually specializes in repairing computers.

Best Buy Geek Squad is a bunch of high school/college kids that usually have no official training in anything even remotely related to computer repair, they just have their own knowledge base, which may or may not be that great. And they charge you way more than the repair is worth. Case in point, you took it in, and they didn't actually tell you what parts are damaged. At a minimum I would expect somebody to tell me that they think they need to replace X, Y, Z components, and that the estimated cost would be $X.

If you live in a larger town you should be able to find a specialty repair shop that will actually test the components and tell you exactly what you need to replace - and they will give you an actual cost of repair.

Regarding scorch marks/burnt areas - they won't necessarily appear, but that doesn't mean they aren't fried. If you legitimately got hit by lightning, I would be shocked if your motherboard and hard drive WEREN'T unrepairable. The only way to truly test them is to take a working rig and swap out the components from your damaged rig one by one to test them.

[factotum]

I am tempted to believe them but I can find no evidence of scorch marks or burnt pieces anywhere.


It takes an awful lot less energy to fry an integrated circuit than it would actually take to burn or scorch it--heck, they always recommend earthing yourself while fiddling around inside the PC, because a static discharge from your finger could be enough to wreck something! Whatever you end up doing I would recommend investing in a surge protector--they're designed to prevent surges like this damaging anything expensive.

[Gnoman]

A UPS is more expensive, but a better option than a simple surge protector. I've known several people (myself included) that have lost PCs to "dirty" (inconsistent voltage/current) electricity (either from old wiring in the house itself, or deteriorated infrastructure in the grid) over time. A surge protector won't do anything about that, but a UPS seems to give a cleaner supply of power, extending system life.

[TuggyNE]

A UPS is more expensive, but a better option than a simple surge protector. I've known several people (myself included) that have lost PCs to "dirty" (inconsistent voltage/current) electricity (either from old wiring in the house itself, or deteriorated infrastructure in the grid) over time. A surge protector won't do anything about that, but a UPS seems to give a cleaner supply of power, extending system life.

The best UPSes are so-called online ones, where the battery is continuously used to power an inverter with carefully designed optimum power characteristics; since it completely replaces the line power from scratch, no inconsistencies can make it through. They're more expensive, though, since the battery(ies) and all the circuitry have to deal with being in use all the time.

That reminds me, has anyone ever made a combination UPS/external PC power supply? It seems like such a thing would be more efficient and run cooler, since you wouldn't have the tediously redundant inverter/rectifier stages.

[Talanic]

My brother gave me his lightning-damaged machine at one point. In the end, all it needed was a graphics card and a power supply; the rest was fine. Best of luck to you!

[factotum]

That reminds me, has anyone ever made a combination UPS/external PC power supply? It seems like such a thing would be more efficient and run cooler, since you wouldn't have the tediously redundant inverter/rectifier stages.

You would still need the rectifier stages to convert the single battery output voltage into the several different ones that a PC PSU supplies, and you'd also have a gaping hole in the back of your case for the cables to go into. Standard PSU form factor isn't big enough to put a full UPS internally. That leaves the major type of PC which uses external power bricks, namely, laptops--and they don't need UPS because their internal battery takes up the slack if the power drops!

[tyckspoon]

Whatever you end up doing I would recommend investing in a surge protector--they're designed to prevent surges like this damaging anything expensive.

While I would never discourage anybody from investing in a better surge protector (they do wear out eventually and need to be replaced to maintain their protective properties, and it's not all that expensive to get a nice heavy-duty one once you learn how to read the specs on them) it should be noted that they aren't rated to protect against direct lightning strike. Pretty much nothing is, which is why the preferred method of lightning protection is to get a correctly installed lightning rod to guide the strike away from the actual home wiring. You let that much power break into your home circuits and it's going to fry something, probably several somethings, before it finishes passing through.

[LordShotGun]

While I would never discourage anybody from investing in a better surge protector (they do wear out eventually and need to be replaced to maintain their protective properties, and it's not all that expensive to get a nice heavy-duty one once you learn how to read the specs on them) it should be noted that they aren't rated to protect against direct lightning strike. Pretty much nothing is, which is why the preferred method of lightning protection is to get a correctly installed lightning rod to guide the strike away from the actual home wiring. You let that much power break into your home circuits and it's going to fry something, probably several somethings, before it finishes passing through.

Exactly. It was a direct lighting strike to my house. Anyway. I have an

ASRock h61m-hvs motherboard. I tried googling it, but all I got was places that no longer sold it.

Radeon hd 6770 graphics card

Two ddr3 4 gig sticks of ram

And my entire computer was built from Ibuypower as an I-Series 502

So what I am getting from this is that I am SOL and am better off just buying a new rig. Well, if that is the case, then I guess I will just wait until cyber monday and look for some good deals. In the meantime my father is going to lend me his ancient laptop, which should allow me to at least do my banking and stuff on it.

[Zherog]

Getting money:
well first see if you have home insurance. see if lightning storm is covered or not. Then make a claim and get some money back minus deductable. Then see if this fall under surge protectors warrenty. see if you can get money there.

I second this suggestion. Worst case scenario is your insurance says it's not covered, which doesn't change anything. Best case is you are covered and can get money from them - minus your deductable - to replace parts or buy a new one.

edit: also, if it is covered, it should also help pay to replace the windows and repair the scorch marks. I would, in this case, also recommend you consult with a private insurance adjuster. They'll fight with your insurance company on your behalf to make sure the don't lowball you on whatever they say needs fixed. For example, my neighbor had hail damage to his aluminum siding; the insurance company wanted to pay for somebody to come replace just the damaged sections. The adjuster was able to get all the siding replaced (otherwise it doesn't match, etc).

Again, it's just a few phone calls in both cases - one to the insurance company to see if it's covered, and if it is a call or two to a public adjuster to find one you feel comfortable with.

[Erloas]

Exactly. It was a direct lighting strike to my house. Anyway. I have an

ASRock h61m-hvs motherboard. I tried googling it, but all I got was places that no longer sold it.

Radeon hd 6770 graphics card

Two ddr3 4 gig sticks of ram

And my entire computer was built from Ibuypower as an I-Series 502

So what I am getting from this is that I am SOL and am better off just buying a new rig. Well, if that is the case, then I guess I will just wait until cyber monday and look for some good deals. In the meantime my father is going to lend me his ancient laptop, which should allow me to at least do my banking and stuff on it.
That is new enough that it is probably worth trying to save. The main issue is figuring out where to start. I wouldn't trust Best Buy's tech support for... anything really. While they might have someone that actually knows what they are doing they are more likely to have people that don't. Because anyone who knows enough about computers to do good tech support is probably not going to be doing it for $10/hr at Best Buy.

Unless you happen to know someone with a lot of extra parts or a similar system they would be willing to take apart and switch out parts you will probably have to take it to a shop. Though I would get an estimate of price up front, they might very well charge you a third the price of a new computer just to tell you what is dead.
If you don't need it up and running quickly you could estimate what you might want to upgrade to and buy a few parts at a time and switch them out as you go. I would assume the power supply is dead, then the motherboard (and depending on the exact CPU you could get a motherboard with a built in video card which you could then tell if your current one is dead). From there it would be the CPU, followed by the RAM. With just the power supply and motherboard you should be able to mostly troubleshoot the other parts just using the beep codes, though the CPU might be needed if the old is completely dead instead of just damaged.

[TuggyNE]

You would still need the rectifier stages to convert the single battery output voltage into the several different ones that a PC PSU supplies,

Not technically rectifiers, but yes. There's almost half a dozen different voltages, but, importantly, there are several stages that are only to convert AC to DC. And isolating a significant heat source doesn't seem a bad idea either.


and you'd also have a gaping hole in the back of your case for the cables to go into. Standard PSU form factor isn't big enough to put a full UPS internally. That leaves the major type of PC which uses external power bricks, namely, laptops--and they don't need UPS because their internal battery takes up the slack if the power drops!

I figured the extra space left in the case could just contain a fan and allow tighter packing. Obviously, you'd have to design the power supply for this, but you wouldn't necessarily need a custom case.

[GenericMook]

Yeah, take your parts to a local repair store.

I had something like this happen to me before, and taking it to any major places like Best Buy didn't really help. I ended up taking it to a repair store that my friend works at in the summer, and they figured out which parts were fried and even gave me recommendations and price quotes for the replacement parts.

Granted, they knew that my friend worked there, so they were willing to go the extra mile, but most local shops tend to be better than any of the big-name places.