So I was plugging in my rgb backplate while my pc was on because it wasn’t working at first so I kept the pc on to save time rather than powering it off. When I went to plug in the rgbs the 4 power pins touched the back of the graphics card and the system just shut off. My guess is it grounded the system resulting in a shutoff. I rebooted and everything worked fine, but I’m wondering if I damaged anything. Graphics card works fine and it’s stable as it was before. Everything works as before but I’m still skeptical to what happened. Thanks
Pc shut off after touching graphics card with 4 pin rgb connector
- Thread starter KINNSTER
- Start date
Solution
- Apr 6, 2009
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Sounds like you got lucky and only created a temporary short. This is exactly why you should ALWAYS power down your system (and disconnect the various power sources...power cable, display, and powered speakers, at a minimum) when working on your rig's innards.
photonboy
Titan
- Jun 20, 2006
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99.99% it's fine.
It's impossible to give you a 100% yes but the fact that you see no issues yet suggests it is just fine.
I think you've also learned an important lesson.. in fact it's the first thing we're taught in electronics.
ALWAYS. POWER. OFF. YOUR. EQUIPMENT.
photonboy
Titan
- Jun 20, 2006
- 21,567
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- 85,015
You said "power pins" before so I guess you meant SATA power cables.
If so, it's likely what happened is you created a SHORT through the cable. So it's like running power through a small WIRE which has very little resistance.
The electrons come through one wire of the SATA power cable, follow the path of least resistance on the graphics card (probably just a copper strip), then go back in the other sata power cable wire back to the PSU.
When there's minimal resistance the current goes very HIGH which then causes the PSU's Overcurrent protection (sometimes called Over Power) to kick in and immediately stop delivering power thus causing the system to crash.
So in SHORT. Pun intended, you probably just tripped some protection feature in the PSU which then shut down the system before anything bad happened.
Usually if something got too much power and was damaged there's an obvious indication. Not much on the PC can be damaged like this without showing immediate signs.
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