"Oh haha I found out why your PC isn't turning on, you forgot to turn on the power switch!"

*flick*

Oh god... that killed my first PC 😢

As a youngster I had once a non functioning power supply. I thought I could switch it for just a second to give it a "small" boost ;D
I was nearly about to shit my pants when the supply died with a "peng" , because it was my father's old but occasionally used PC ;)

I mean why is that so accessible ;_;

Christ +1 as I did this a couple of times when I was about 10 experimenting before I realised

Higher voltage makes your PC faster!

PS: don't do that, or will get a faster PC(by buy new one).

I actually broke running pentium 3 pc in school like that :D just burn smell . I hated that class it was electrotechnical measuring

Does anyone use their computer on a higher voltage outlet anyways?

I was doing something on my brothers computer (my old pc tower) and he was hanging around. Can't remember what it was exactly. But I said to him "Do not touch anything!" as the comouter was on and I was checking some stuff.

5 second later there is this loud pop and the computer goes silent, no power. And I see his face and he looks like a puppy that knows he's done wrong.

I was like "what did you do?!" He said "nothing...". I spun the case around and immediatelly saw that he flicked the kill switch...

After than he meeded a new powersupply and cpu (and maybe the motherboard as well, can't remember exactly)

Since that day, me and my other brothers give him shit about this quite often.

@erraticerrors how about the large percentage of countries that operate on 240v only?

You'd be hard pressed to run a 110 only appliance in my house.

@bottswana I didn't think that some places only use 240s

@erraticerrors Most countries operate on 220-240. 110 is in the minority.

http://worldstandards.eu/electricit...

@bottswana I discovered something new today, thanks!

@erraticerrors Higher voltage => less Ampères => less power loss in wires => $$$ saved
but it's far more dangerous if you touch a 240V wire compared to 110V.

Flicking the red switch from 110 to 240 should not kill the PSU, but it won't start.
240 => 110 will definitely kill it. Yeah I did that once in school and I still feel bad about it... 😅

@qbasic16 friends of mine also did it at school and they had to pay for the same pc cause they fried the motherboard by switching the red switch while the PC was running

It was at this moment rvnx knew, he fucked up.

Yeeeeeeah. Let's switch PSU from 220V to 115V (USA voltage). I smell magic smoke escaping.

@DLMousey yes. Clearly marked with yellow cable. I just didn't think it was relevant to mention! XD

That goddamn switch.

I killed my first PC because of it. I was young and naive. The PC was slow to boot for some reason, mother kept protesting about it since she used the PC too, so I was trying to find a quick solution.

Flipping a red switch is never the solution.

Wait is this switch literally made to fry your PC? I don't get it.

@Florens This PSU is made to operate on two voltages 220V and 115V. You can switch between them using the switch.

@Jarric And why does the voltage it operates on matter? In the end your PC only need a small percentage right? I know CPUs are supposed to run between 2-3V.

@Florens Well. PSU takes either 220V (if you live in EU) or 115V (if in USA) as input. Then it transforms the input voltage from AC to DC and lowers it to 12V, 5V and 3.3V that is used to power up PC components.

///EDIT: AC is easier to transport over distant land.

@Jarric absolutely, but (just as technical addendum) at very long distances (and at high voltages), DC becomes more efficient, because you don't have complex losses (wire capacitance). The better efficiency outweights the higher costs of highvoltage AC-DC converters. 😉

I must confess, at age 12 I saw a hard disk on my dad's bed for the first time and I just loved seeing inside of electrical devices and learn, so I umm, opened it, split it to Peace's and took one of it's disks to dad asking him why does an HDD has a CD inside of it?

I was lucky to leave ER room that day 😓 (luckily it was a brand new HDD with no data, and it was 20GB of size and IDE, not even SATA)

@qbasic16 Isn't voltage drop becoming more annoying as distance increases?

@Jarric correct, but higher voltage on the wires = less current = less voltage drop 😉