American power supply versus British power outlet

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dukemaynard

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Sep 18, 2013
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As you could probably tell from the title something very bad results. Long story short the PC I brought over from the states to Britain made a very load pop with some smoke seeping out the back once I plugged it in, blowing the fuse of the room in the process. I swore that I thought I had checked the power supply as being ok for 240v but empirically it can be seen that it's not. The power supply was never terribly good anyways, but the rest of the guts of the system are.

How much did I fry from that?
 
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Shaun o

Shaun o

Illustrious
Oct 7, 2007
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No No No.
On the back of most power supply`s there is a switch, that needs to be changed from 110v used in the USA to 240v AC. UK.
If you do not move that switch before plugging in Poof, white flash, and acrid smoke cloud.
Yep it`s dead.
You will not know until you buy a new power supply for Uk 240v AC usage.
If the power supply was a good to medium quality one chances are it did a fair job of protecting the rest of the system.

 
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menetlaus

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Jul 19, 2007
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Hard to say.

You could be one lucky SOB and the system might be fine as is (once swtiched to 240v input) if the fuse for the room tripped fast enough to prevent fatal damage to the PSU.

You could be very unlucky and have a completely fried system.

My recommendation as you let some of the magic smoke out of the PSU is to, at the very least, replace it before you try to use the system again.

Better way would be to remove everything you can and for the first boot have only the mobo, CPU, and ram installed/connected (and a GPU if there is no onboard), this way if there was some damage to the motherboard/etc it won't destroy your hard drives (and GPU) if the system goes belly up on your first boot attempt.

If that's exactly your PSU as linked to on newegg - see the little red switch near the main on/off switch... that's the one that needed to be switched to 230/240V (BEFORE) you plug it into British power outlets
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Moderator
Mar 16, 2013
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A LOT of power supplies nowadays are autoswitching. You just need the right plug, and it autosenses.

EDIT: The one in question, does have a 110/230v switch on the back.
 
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Shaun o

Shaun o

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Oct 7, 2007
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A good remedy. Auto voltage sensing.

I once saw a person in the UK here switch the 240v slider to 110v with the same result his own stupid fault, curiosity killed the cat scenario.


So it`s nice to know they have thought about this for people moving from country to country.

 
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