A user is very unlucky: He upgrades his setup with a new monitor, and shortly after, sparks fly. Assuming the error is at the wrong spot, he disassembles another graphics card and a second monitor. In the end, it is not his hardware that is to blame but his apartment. And he is very lucky that he did not seriously injure himself during the whole incident.
A gamer now reports on reddit that he wanted to replace his monitor. But when he connects his monitor to his graphics card, sparks fly and both the monitor and graphics card are damaged.
At first, he fears that he must have caused a short circuit when he accidentally touched the DisplayPort connection with the HDMI cable.
Since he thinks nothing of it, the gamer buys a new monitor and a new graphics card. He re-installs the graphics card in his computer and then reconnects the monitor to his computer. Once again, sparks fly and the graphics card is damaged again. Now he doubts his first theory about the cable.
Incorrectly wired sockets lead to a short circuit
What was the problem? Following the advice of another user, he bought a socket tester and checked the sockets. This is a small device that you plug into the socket to see if it is wired correctly.
Here, he was surprised to find that 3 of the 4 sockets in the room were wired incorrectly. This had not occurred to him before because he had always unknowingly used the correct socket for the past few years. Only because the new monitor came with too short a power cable did he change the socket. He himself exclaims somewhat incredulously:
It’s crazy that in the 3 years we have lived here, we never connected anything else to these 3 sockets and discovered this.
Overall, the user was indeed very lucky. Many people write in the thread: In the worst case, he could have caused a fire in the apartment or seriously injured himself. It was a great stroke of luck that in the end, only the hardware suffered and that no one was seriously hurt.
Could this happen in Germany? The user explains in another post that he lives in Denver, a city in Colorado. In the USA, the electrical grid is different from ours in Germany: In the USA, there are 110 to 120 volts and 50 Hz, while in Germany, it is 230 to 240 volts and 60 Hz. This means that there are completely different conditions compared to the German electrical grid (via visittheusa.de)
Moisture and cheap adapters can also pose a risk
Not only an incorrectly wired socket can pose a great risk to your hardware. In general, we would strongly advise against handling liquids near your hardware. You would not be the first person who destroys their hardware because it got wet.
Another often underestimated risk is very cheap adapters. Especially when one still has an older power supply, users want to use an adapter to make the power supply compatible with a new graphics card. However, this usually poses a high risk to your hardware, as often just one cable can put your entire computer at risk: If someone uses an adapter to power the 8-pin of the graphics card with two SATA connections, they underpower the connection and, in the worst case, cause a smoldering fire in the computer.
An upgrade for your PC: Do you wish for more performance in gaming but don’t want to spend the money or effort to buy a new gaming PC? MeinMMO has a few tips for you on how to properly upgrade your gaming PC and even save money by considering a few details:
No money for a new PC? Here’s how to properly upgrade your gaming PC
