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Problem description: When I powered up my PC after installing a new PSU for the purposes of upgrading my graphics card, it booted as normal into Windows but I smelled burning plastic and then smoke started wafting through the mesh in the tower (the boot kept going until I pulled the plug). Turns out that one of my 4-pin fan power cables is overheating - the cord is high-quality and its wires bundled under mesh that was hot to the touch after pulling the plug. The red wire looks to be the culprit, it's partially melted on both ends and probably all the way through the rest of it. One of my case features includes a small card behind the motherboard, powered by a SATA dongle (on the left) that centralizes the fan power ports for ease of cable management, as there are soft rubber holes around the chassis through which to thread cables. The overheating wire was connected to the CPU_Fan plug on the card on one end, and the SYS_FAN3 port on the motherboard on the other end. I built this PC and I'm not entirely sure why it is plugged in this way. I'm assuming this has been a problem that just didn't have the opportunity to manifest until now. Attempted fixes: Under the assumption that I cabled incorrectly, I removed the damaged cable and tried booting - the CPU fan didn't spin. I plugged the CPU fan (which had been plugged into a CPU_FAN port on the motherboard, as opposed to the case) directly into the case port and it did spin, but boot did not complete (one thing I should note - the chassis didn't ship with a boot speaker. I should get one!). It's possible that my motherboard was damaged even if the ports the cable plugged into don't appear harmed and Windows was running fine when the smoke appeared. There's also the matter of the power supply's plugs - the SATA power cable was connected to a "peripheral" 6-pin port on the power supply (the PSU's manual noted it was for fans, etc). There's another 6-pin port for SATA power but I did not try moving the power cable because I thought it was too risky to power it up again and risk damage to the board. Recent changes: I was running the PC successfully for several weeks with an older 1000 watt power supply and a GTX 960 graphics card. Upon upgrading the card, the old supply didn't have the required 8-pin VGA connectors to power the card (or enough 6-pins to use the adapters included with the card), so I bought a newer power supply with sufficient 8-pins. -- Operating system: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit System specs: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/8K389W Location: United States I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes. Google turned up a lot of stuff about melting MOLEX connectors to CPU fans, but nothing like this.
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Sep 10, 2016 18:40
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 13:45 |
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Two main points: 1. It sounds like you shorted out the system by plugging the power output from the fan card to a power output on the motherboard. 2. The cords that connect to modular power supplies are proprietary and you can't re-use them with a different power supply, even if they fit. It sounds like you tried to just swap to a different power supply and plug the cables back in, which would have a lot of potential to fry things. Overall I'd tear down the system and start with the new power supply, CPU, and one stick of RAM outside of the case. Pay VERY close attention to what cables should be plugged in where per the manual and don't just plug things in randomly whereever it seems like they fit. If you can't get it to POST now, the motherboard has most likely been fried.
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Sep 11, 2016 00:49
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Thanks! Luckily most of my parts are still within throwing distance of their RMA deadline.
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Sep 11, 2016 01:13
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