My PC was on fire! yes actual fire!

Status
Not open for further replies.
My computer has a history of freezing. It randomly shuts itself off, well as i restarted my computer i went to the bios and it said my cpu temp was 158 degrees! I know that is not normal, so just about a week ago i was on my computer and i was surprised that the computer did not freeze and to my surprise it shut it self down. I noticed a smell in the air like something was burning and I thought it was my g/f cooking again. I opened the side panel of my pc to let cool air come in faster and i waited 20 minutes till i started the pc up again. the first 10 seconds after it was on i noticed a bright light reflecting off the wall and i got up and looked at the side of the tower and there was actual fire right next to my fan. What can be causing the problems of freezing and the fire.
 
A little to late now
could be bad fan or loose connection who knows
time for some new parts aha
does this thing still work after the fire!!
 
im scared

im scared to see if it works because i dont want another fire to spark and the whole house burns down. I installed a new fan 1 month ago and it still froze right after bought it. I have no idea what is wrong. the fire started on the left side of the fan.
 
Take it outside, take off the side of the case, and run it out there without any fans. It may just be a faulty fan connection. If it does burn down your house, I'll donate $5 to a new one!
 
what is a thermal pad is that the little sticky things that are attached to the base of the fan (sorry i dont know what it is called) and also no i didnt apply thermal paste. where do i put it. Im sorry i am very new to the "computer scene" and i know very little
 
It's highly unlikely, in a "one day a flying pig might evolve, but it won't be tomorrow" sort of way.

Try it if you like, but there's a good chance it won't I'm afraid. An expensive lesson I know, and I sympathise (we've all had them), but one that you've hopefully learned now. I would advise taking it to a repair shop to find out how salvageable it is.
 
looks like it's landfill time.
Take the hard drive out, bring it outside w/ an extension cord, fire it up and take a video of it so you can send it to america's funniest videos :)

Computers are so cheap nowadays, it's probably not worth trying to fix when you can get a new barebones system for a few hundred...
 
Reply

You girl friend cooking? :haha: When you saw the fire, did you have your case open? Or was it a clear case? What components did you end up losing? What burned down? :hotbounce If you work a lot with your system hardware components or inside your system case, then it is a good idea to have a small fire extinguisher at a reachable place in your room. You should have adequate equipment. You definately don't want your house buring down to the ground.

The case fan or the CPU fan? Based on what others replied, I guess it was the CPU fan. Usually the heat sinks are pre-doped. A thermal paste, pad helps dissipating heat from a CPU.

What? You all have had a small fire caused by your system? :-o
 
kbennett said:
what is a thermal pad is that the little sticky things that are attached to the base of the fan (sorry i dont know what it is called) and also no i didnt apply thermal paste. where do i put it. Im sorry i am very new to the "computer scene" and i know very little
thermal pads are still used and you don't need thermal paste when using the pad.
some (intel) would rather you use the pad and not the paste
we all get lucky sometimes and it just could be a shorted fan wire.
your power supply may be now shot
 
Now i did have a mobo spark on me before. (fan had shorted with the molex power, i though what the heck and plugged it into the mobo directly and badda bing)

But no fires.

Even if he had no thermal paste/pad...wouldnt the CPU shut off before it cought fire????
 
I was on fire once and rolling on the grass helped but in the end my brother had to pat it out. So maybe just keep a bucket of water ready and install a smoke alarm in there.
 
under right conditions you can get a flash off from overheated cpu
most times fire is from a short or a fan motor again still a short when your done
 
hi there....what kind of power supply do you have?...

we had a probleme 2 year ago a lot of damage and it was the power supply....


kbennett said:
My computer has a history of freezing. It randomly shuts itself off, well as i restarted my computer i went to the bios and it said my cpu temp was 158 degrees! I know that is not normal, so just about a week ago i was on my computer and i was surprised that the computer did not freeze and to my surprise it shut it self down. I noticed a smell in the air like something was burning and I thought it was my g/f cooking again. I opened the side panel of my pc to let cool air come in faster and i waited 20 minutes till i started the pc up again. the first 10 seconds after it was on i noticed a bright light reflecting off the wall and i got up and looked at the side of the tower and there was actual fire right next to my fan. What can be causing the problems of freezing and the fire.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back