The high-quality power supply unit is the first and last line of internal defense to keep your PC from impending harm, as it’s loaded with a bevy of protections to prevent irreparable damage. However, someone at ASUS decided to take a shortcut when an ROG Strix PSU owner revealed that the unit returned from RMA featured a bypassed safety fuse. If you think this wasn’t already blatantly irresponsible of the company, here’s what happened next.
The insides of the premium 850W PSU were shown by Redditor "Euphoric-Bluebird806" and while opening a power supply unit voids the warranty, the owner says that he was denied warranty service anyway, so it didn’t matter. If you take a look at the image gallery below, you’ll notice that a piece of wire was soldered directly across the fuse contacts and shipped to the customer, completely bypassing the internal safety fuse.
After running the ASUS PSU for about two hours, the PC tripped the room’s main electrical breaker, and when attempting to reset the breaker and power on the computer again, the breaker tripped a second time. Realizing that something was amiss, Euphoric-Bluebird806 opened the power supply unit to try and identify the culprit, and the cause was immediately obvious.
Keep in mind that what ASUS’ technicians did was thoroughly inept, because the fuse is designed to prevent catastrophic failures to a PC while minimizing the chance of an electrical fire. The excessive current draw from the ASUS PSU never triggered an internal fuse break and instead found its way to the home’s circuit breaker, causing the trip and acting as the only deterrent against a potential fire hazard.
The Redditor has reached out to ASUS USA, but because he opened the casing, there’s little hope for a resolution through standard channels. Still, it’s possible that the company realizes its technicians were at fault and offers some compensation. After all, the owner is lucky his house and expensive possessions didn’t catch fire.
News Source: Reddit
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