Will computer catch FIRE ??

[Bluga]

I've never heard of it before but i can't help thinking because many computers are turned on 24hrs a day for years. Will its component catch fire or something?

 

[MGMorden]

Barring massive power supply failure, I seriously doubt it. Nothing seems to get hot enough inside.

 

[tontod]

my monitor almost caught fire - i saw orange smoke coming out of it, i shut it off right away. not kidding, but I think that's pretty rare, i had a pretty crappy monitor anyway.

 

[Modus]

Waste of a thread. You ought to be sentenced to two GMT days of AnandTech solitary confinement for "frivolous use of colons".



Seriously, though, this is a waste.

Modus

 

[Bluga]

huh ?

 

[Fardringle]

Unless you have a healthy coating of dust and/or other flammable items, it would have to be a hot day in Arizona (can't post that other word ) before the computer would actually catch fire. Smoke is quite possible if you burn a circuit, but I'd be surprised to see actual flames..

 

[Muerto]

My friend and I almost started a fire with some computer hardware. I was helping him cary his computer back to his house after a LAN party and we got the power supplies for his speakers and hub mixed up.

One was drawing four times as much current as it should have been and it was unbelieveably hot when we noticed it. Any longer and I think it could have started a fire. He doesn't unplug the power supplies anymore.

 

[Bluga]

any more experience?

 

[Finality]

I've set the Y-connectors on fire in my computer

Silly HDDs are hot swappable pity the cheap Y-connectors aren't Managed to fry a $120 piece of LVD cable that day.

I'd be worried during electrical storms. A nice UPS should clear your worries though.

 

[MinniePin]

I had a monitor that was smoking so bad that it set off the fire alarm and we had to evac 200+ people out of the building... never purchased Mag brand after that...

 

[Hanpan]

If you put ram in backwards yes but that's a story for another time

 

[shawnmos]

I fried my old at powersupply by hooking up my floppy drive incorrectly. The second I turned the computer on all this smoke came from the powersupply. I unpluged it instantly so it didn't catch on fire but if I left it like that much longer it probably would have. Strangely enough the only thing that got fried was the floppy drive. Everything else was fine. I tried turning the powersupply back on an hour later hoping it would cool off(cause the outside of it was hot). When it turned it made this real high pitched sound and the fan did not power up. Oh well, now I make sure everthing is connected properly BEFORE I turn the computer on.

EDIT: Oh, back on topic, no I have never had a computer catch fire by just leaving it on.

 

[jamarno]

I saw a Packard-Bell computer and a 27" Emerson TV smoke, but actual blazing fires should be rare because the circuit boards are made of fire-resistant material, and the case is designed to confine the fire and smother it, even if the case is made of plastic (US TVs have been required since the mid-1970s to have fire-resistant cases, and all monitors use similar plastic).

Fire risk is a good reason to not run a computer without its cover in place or change the metal cover to one made of ordinary plastic.

Shawnmos: How can you fry a PS by connecting a floppy drive the wrong way? By pushing really hard on the plug? Hooking the ribbon cable backward shouldn't be able to do it because floppy signal outputs work by shorting out.

 

[AndyHui]

Ask jonnyGURU about that ATI video card....

I did see a soundcard catch fire once. I have no idea why, but one of the circuits just combusted, caught fire and blew itself all over the back of the video card sitting next to it. The smell.....

 

[fallenoncrack]

I had a monitor that started on fire, I turned it off and threw it out the house as fast I as I could. I later took it apart and man it was burnt inside.

 

[Wolfman35]

Fire is very rare but if you've ever exploded a capacitor in a Power Supply ..... Fire would be a secondary worry. A big Cap. exploding sounds like a Cannon going off!!!! This has happened to me twice ... once at 3am while everyone was asleep (key-word: WAS) Actually I have seen flames once when I hooked up the Digital daughter card on a SB Live with the ribbon cable reversed. The cable caught fire and melted. Took a week to get that smell outta the office !!!! Then there was that time the Cat pissed in the monitor but actually the cat got the worse end of that deal as the monitor survived ... Cat unfortunately did not.

 

[Losty]

i once had a netgear nic burnt
left the computer on, came home...smelled something smokey
computer was off
opened it and saw a hole in my nic and my pci slot with charcoal covering.
nothing else bad, but i'm wondering why it did that still...

 

[jeans2nd]

The only one's that really count (servers, AS400, etc.) are located in a room with a Halon system, So even if they did catch fire it wouldn't last long. And there are some people ... I'd love to set fire to their PC's.

 

[Zenmervolt]

No, fire is reserved for a catastrophic part failure, which would be due to a manufacturing defect (or wiring the "turbo" button on your 486 case to the "reset" jumper on the 486 mobo, but that's another story). Because of that, leaving the computer on is very unlikely to cause a fire. Of course if you had a G4 cube and duct taped over all the vents while cracking RC5, you might get a lot of smoke and a bad smell.

Zenmervolt