Free Lesson for Everyone! Don't overload power cables :-P .

HeatSurge

HeatSurge

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Jul 2, 2008
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As promised earlier this week, I uploaded the pix of the power cable which burned down. Have fun viewing! :

Index of /burntcable

... and here's the cool story, bro:

So the way the cable burned was it was connected from 4x molex to a AMD 7950. I turned on the PC and it was actually fine, it booted and everything.

Then I turned on the load to the card (100% sustained).

Of course, the fans sped up... more and more... until they hit 80%+, and I smelled something - burnt rubber.

I looked over, and that exposed part of the cable was GLOWING. Like, not just slightly red, but bright orange like the core of a really low-wattage light bulb.

So I shit myself, leaped out of my chair towards the power plug and just pulled the shit out of it.

Luckily aside from some burnt rubber shit that fell out of the cable and which I shook out of the motherboard and case, there was no other damage except the cable itself.

Even now, if I touch the proper cables that came with the new PSU which has enough PCIe connectors, they're quite warm to the touch.

High-end video cards suck a SHITLOAD of power under full load - don't skimp on the power cables or you might be more sorry than I was. If I weren't here to watch this happen, I could see this developing into a nice fire in my house...
 
I've also had a bad experience with a power supply. A few years ago I smelt ozone and was wondering what was going on, I look under my computer and see bright white (like you see from a high wattage arc lamp) and it sounded like a Jacobs ladder. Quickly pulled the power plug and grabbed my computer and ran outside so it wouldn't burn down the house.

Luckily it didn't damage anything other than the PSU, but oh god did it stink.
 
So the PSU was arcing internally or something? That's gotta be scary... Did you open up to see what it looked like? Just black and burnt inside? :-P
 
Something similar happened to me about a week ago. I plugged in my laptop to my b-hut power strip and definitely smelled something burning.
 
CoTTon said:
lol....

thats why you SLI :)

less load on both lol.
Click to expand...

I was trying to do tri-SLI (tri-Fire?lol) when the above happened btw, the PSU only had 4xPCIe connectors, needed 6. So I bought a PSU that came with 6 to begin with. Bad planning/thought I could go cheap and a converter like this could handle the load. Was REALLY wrong in this case.
 
HeatSurge said:
So the PSU was arcing internally or something? That's gotta be scary... Did you open up to see what it looked like? Just black and burnt inside? :-P
Click to expand...



Yea, it was a low voltage arc flash. Certainly freaked the fuck out of me that's for sure. Inside everything was roasted. Had to pitch the supply because the smell was just god awful even after a few days.... (and that was the last "Ultra" brand PSU I ever bought.....)
 
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