Thunder > Dead pc.

[Darkfire]

Yo.. There was thunder here today, which killed my PC, screen and modem.

But I'm not really sure if I got insurance on the PC, it might be gone now, so I got a few questions.

Antec Nine Hundred case with:

ASUS P5Q PRO Motherboard
Nvidia Geforce 9800gtx+
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
Western something HDD with 500 GB
2GB RAM
OCZ Stealth X Stream Power Supply 600W

Well that's most of the facts of the pc, I was wondering, if I don't have insurance, is this something to use money on, like buy a new motherboard / cpu / power supply if its broke?

Suggestions?

[cloakster]

Does the motherboard boot up at all?(the lines of white text on black screen you get when you first start the computer)  If so, it would give you some error code in the form of a sequence of beeps. If not, your gonna either have to take it to a local PC repair shop or go piece by piece to see which ones are broken.

[Darkfire]

There is a green light on the motherboard, and when I turn the mic on I get a light in it.

That's everything I get, heh.. Guess the power supply might not be broke?

[cloakster]

Nothing shows up on the screen at all?

[Darkfire]

No, it's pretty much dead, everything. The screen itself is dead aswell...

[bubbles]

Might be covered by your house insurance, but I doubt it. You can buy surge protecters that offer a guarantee of various value to things plugged into them, but then again you have to prove your PC was damaged by an surge and not something else, which is nearly damn impossible.


Chances are your motherboard is fried, and probably other things. Powersuppy obviously took a hit.. the only real thing you can do is to take out each component of your machine and test it in other machines (sound card, graphics card, harddrives etc) to make sure they are ok...  try the PSU on another machine if you can to see if thats running ok.

If the PC was powered off at the time chances are the RAM and the CPU would be fine, RAM would be easy to check anyways as above.  If you're lucky you'll just have to replace the motherboard and PSU.

Awkward testing everything like this esecpially if you don't have another PC to hand - you're in for a fun night.  Of course you can hand it in somewhere to be tested but you have to take their word on it and might cost you a fair few bucks for testing alone.

Word of advice.. you probably use a power block to plug all your computer gear in.  Fork out an extra 10 to 15 dollah to get one with a surge protector on it. Can even get ones that your network/broadband connection go's through incase the surge comes in via your phoneline/broadband line.  They're not fool proof but it might have saved your machine.

If your screen is dead as in no light when you power it on its probably the fuse in the plug thats fried.. hopfully thats all thats wrong there.

[Darkfire]

Alright, going to tell the shop it stopped working yesterday all suddenly and hope the warranty takes it, or house insourance... :p else you wont see me ingame for a few years :p

EDIT:

The pc screen itself has been plugged in all the time, and it was REALLY hot on the back

[bubbles]

Might work if you do that on the warrenty.. but they do check these things when they wonder why something suddenly stops working so they'll probably just so no and bill you for their time and effort.

And if you lie so you can claim it on your house insurance... thats fraud so make sure its worth the risk, because whoever pays the premium would get charged, couple of days in court and a nice big fine and criminal record and perhaps jail if they find out you lied on the claim. Insurance companies check these things very well and you can bet your PC would be examined so they'll know a power surge caused it. 

Then again your policy might cover contents damaged by power surges, should check your policy. Just don't do anything stupid

[Darkfire]

Alright, lets see what happen when I call them first, and tell them it just stopped working

[jerico]

Insurance won't give you anything.

But the warrenty depends on the store. Some stores provide just a new one and sent the old one just back to the factory and they got send back a new one. That's how we do it in our store.

Even if we know it was lightning we just sent it back and we get a new one.

gr