European outlet fried hubby's PC

[Kitemale89]

Fresh to Europe, stationed in lovely Germany, my beloved husband plugged his desktop into a European outlet without converting it. Genius, I know. Long story short, I want to get it fixed before he comes home from deployment. Question of the day is, with a power surge like that, which part got fried and, more importantly, can it be replaced without a soldering iron?

 

[dmill89]

It probably blew out the primary side of the powersupply (the part responsible for converting 120v AC or in this case 240v AC to lower voltage DC). If it was a half decent powersupply there should not be any damage to other components. If it was a really cheap powersupply without protection circuitry there may be other damage but hopefully the secondary side of the PSU absorbed it. In either case you definitely need a New powersupply and no this does not require soldering just unscrew the old one and disconnect the connectors and then screw the new one in and reconnect the connectors. It should only involve 4 machine screws and 4-8 power connectors in most systems. If you get a new powersupply I would highly recommend one with Active PFC, this will auto-detect the voltage so you won't have this situation happen again.

 

[Kitemale89]

Great, that was better news than I could have hoped for. I'll definitely take your advice, the American outlets - even on post - are few and far between. Hopefully you're right about the PSU, but taking your suggestion is a good start at any rate. Thanks again!

 

[dmill89]

I'm just about cretin the PSU is fried since it is the first component in line to receive the excess voltage and the most susceptible. There is the possibility that other components are fried as well but the PSU is the logical place to start. If you still have issues after replacing the PSU then you need to look for other damage. Any good PSU has protection circuitry to contain damage, A really good PSU would either have active PFC or circuitry that would prevent it from even turning on in an over volt situation although there are far more PSUs out there with circuitry to contain damage to the PSU (all but the lowest quality ones have it) than those that have advanced circuitry to spare the PSU itself. The absolute bottom of the rung PSUs often have no protection circuitry at all in which case it would be a matter of whether the secondary absorbed all of the over volt or allowed some of it to pass through to other components.