Smoke and Hardware

Corpsecrank · 05 Sep 2011

I am sure at least a couple of people here are going to have some experience with hardware that has been in a fire. Maybe you know someone who salvaged some hardware from a machine that was in a mild house fire or maybe a business burned and they had hardware that could potentially be saved. Whatever the case may be.

I had a friend who acquired some hardware that had been in a house fire. Some of the stuff worked fine some of it not at all. But I have a lesson about hardware that has gone through a fire.

One of the pieces of hardware that we were using was a 9800 gt graphics card. That card went through the fire mentioned above. The card ran fine the first few times we used it. But the other day I put it on a board while testing and I leaned over to touch the pins and start the board up and as soon as I did the card burned up violently about 4 inches from my face.

I checked out the card once all the blue spots in my vision cleared up and that is when I noticed something very important.

When hardware goes through a fire and is exposed to smoke it is damaged. It doesn't take heat or even excessive amounts of smoke to cause this damage. The reason why is because the smoke is highly acidic and the residue it leaves behind on the hardware causes everything to corrode. It might take a couple days or a couple of weeks for the corrosion to finally show and be a serious issue but it will happen and how fast depends on the amount of residue left by the smoke and just how acidic the smoke was. Once it corrodes heavily enough and you put power to it POOF.

So remember that if you ever deal with hardware that has gone through a fire even if the fire was pretty mild if the hardware was exposed to smoke at all it is probably only a matter of time.

paulpicks21 · 05 Sep 2011

Thanks for the info.

Paul.

brianzion · 05 Sep 2011

hi good advice i think any electrical devices that have gone through smoke/heat damage should be destroyed the irony is it may cause another fire and you could be very hurt so its not worth the risk :)

The Howling Wolves · 05 Sep 2011

That's great info that you are sharing.
It's a question that should be asked when purchasing a used computer.
Has it been in or around a fire before where there was smoke?

jfar · 05 Sep 2011

Corpsecrank said:

I am sure at least a couple of people here are going to have some experience with hardware that has been in a fire. Maybe you know someone who salvaged some hardware from a machine that was in a mild house fire or maybe a business burned and they had hardware that could potentially be saved. Whatever the case may be.

I had a friend who acquired some hardware that had been in a house fire. Some of the stuff worked fine some of it not at all. But I have a lesson about hardware that has gone through a fire.

One of the pieces of hardware that we were using was a 9800 gt graphics card. That card went through the fire mentioned above. The card ran fine the first few times we used it. But the other day I put it on a board while testing and I leaned over to touch the pins and start the board up and as soon as I did the card burned up violently about 4 inches from my face.

I checked out the card once all the blue spots in my vision cleared up and that is when I noticed something very important.

When hardware goes through a fire and is exposed to smoke it is damaged. It doesn't take heat or even excessive amounts of smoke to cause this damage. The reason why is because the smoke is highly acidic and the residue it leaves behind on the hardware causes everything to corrode. It might take a couple days or a couple of weeks for the corrosion to finally show and be a serious issue but it will happen and how fast depends on the amount of residue left by the smoke and just how acidic the smoke was. Once it corrodes heavily enough and you put power to it POOF.

So remember that if you ever deal with hardware that has gone through a fire even if the fire was pretty mild if the hardware was exposed to smoke at all it is probably only a matter of time.

Thanks for the information, will keep it in mind for the future.

dbtmellis · 05 Sep 2011

Ive been through a house fire, sadly there was nothing left of my PC (or anything else in the house) left to salvage.