Topic: 3 motherboards fried trying to get a 7th GPU work (Read 2011 times)

When setting up the GA-H110 Installed the CPU and fan, plugged the GPU into the board for a startoff, got into bios fine and set the Gpu to pcie slot 1, turned on mining mode rebooted and it went into windows fine. I thought everything is ok..
Then turned off and put the gigabyte 1060 Gpu that was in the board onto a VER 009S powered riser.
Everything is on a single EVGA 1000 psu.
Rebooted and the CPU fan spun once then stopped and no post or boot.
Took the GPU out of the riser and plugged it directly into the M/b again.
Tried to boot again but its dead, no CPU fan starting, nothing - dead..

Any ideas on if I can reset the m/b, Have taken the battery out and shorted the cmos pins but still nothing.
The only thing that was different was it went onto a riser then M/B dead after that.
Gone through 3 Motherboards no and have replaced everything new apart from the Risers.
Any ideas ?

Finksy on these forums. My plan now is to just buy 300w seasonic psus to power the boards only and use the 2000w psus for the graphic cards. Should be good I hope

You can plug second cpu power cable instead of pci-e power cable. They are similar but not the same ))

whered you get your psu from?

Hey there, don't mind me but I'm wondering how you can check the quality of your risers? Is there a guide to it or something like that. Thanks!

i currently have a similar situation, mind you im running only 6 cards per machine (tb250-btc) and using a 4kw psu with a pico. i power the board and it burns between the cpu and the backplate (under the heatsink, vrm?), at first i thought it was a ground issue so i wired a ground from the Power Distribution Unit to a screw on a standoff to the motherboard. it powered fine (4 systems) then i got to the 5th and it fried, a pop sound then smoke etc. then i tried to power up the first system i did earlier that was working and it popped and burned. im stumped now... my option now is to take off the picos and power the boards with a 300w or so real psu and just power the cards from the 4kw but not sure if that is a great idea but i would know its solid grounded through the psu instead of make shift.. just to add im not plugging in molex plugs into the two aux connectors, would that make a difference? cause all 6 are on risers just like OP, 006c risers and powered with a pcie.

the last pic in your post, it happened to me too but it didn't fry everything, it only fried an external pcie 1x connector(few pins) and sata to molex cable(cheap sata to molex came with the riser) I was using to feed electricity to the riser from the psu, first time in life I saw a cable turn red with heat and then it melted, I guess it pulled too much current... whole thing happened in about 5-10 sec when i realized the smell and cable melting, then I immediately turned the psu off.

everything else was fine psu, psu's cables and connectors, even the pcie 1x slot on the mobo was fine too and working. Note that my mobo was Gigabyte 990fxa-ud5

Don't think this is it, since you said as soon as you started the computer it started going on fire. Not when mining. So the PSUs had almost no load.

I did change the riser the second time as I suspected it might be a cause. I also checked the risers for obvious soldering issues on the capacitors or the PCI 1x connector that goes on the mobo to see if there is any shorting (e.g. solders touching etc). As far as I can tell, I don't see anything that stands out or not normal.

Thank you for the comment. Yeah, I understand, it's quite difficult, but at the same time I was almost out of ideas and things to try and 3 mobos, although I can RMA them, it's not a "cheap" thing to try.. I wonder if there is an easier way to test those without risking any gear.. Plug them in and start the PSU with the paper clip method to see what kind of power goes to the riser(s)?

Another thing is this: Currently, the system draws 1080 to 1100 Watts.. with the 7th card, this would have been over the 1200 Watts the PSU supports. However, in that case, it would have just shut down, not fry stuff. Is that assumption wrong? I don't think so, but I'm asking just in case, plus the PSU has short and OCP protection, although the short protection does kick-in in specific conditions so I don't know if a shorted riser will do the trick and trip the protection.

He said he changed the riser the 2nd time he tried it. What are the chances that 2 risers sequentially were both internally shorted.

Really hard to diagnose without actually being there and seeing what the issue can be.

I know back in the litecoin days people destroyed motherboards due to uncut ribbon risers however with USB risers that's not an issue these days.

it is a dead short   trust me.

   I killed the slot the gpu and the psu when I did it.  My guess is  I had a 750 watt psu and you have a beast to do 7 gpus so you feed it more juice and killed more gear.

I do smaller rigs and rarely bother with  a lot of risers.  Shorts are a big reason and my double cataract repaired eye are okay but not great for depth perception and close up stuff.

Same risers, same positions for all of the 6th. But I did change the riser on the 7th once the first one was fried. Also, how can a riser, cause such havoc?

I will photo.

see the standard 1x slots  see the small slot with a little wall


https://i.imgur.com/HlJ3Zuw.jpg

only allows for this


but people using the 16x full slot
can do this which is fine


but they can do this. This is a short  which can kill the card the riser the slot the mobo


 

Did you use the same risers in same positions?  Possibly bad riser like this....

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-this-a-mobo-killer-1649106

Yeah, I was surprised by this as well. I've been building PCs for a long time, for an internet cafe chain back in Europe (about 5-6 per day + fixing and diagnosing on some more), I never had such a case. I was annoyed by the whole thing.

I do suspect the PSU as well, or at least the specific output port of the PSU where that cable plugs in but at the same time I have trust in Corsair not to screw this up or at least catch it in their QA.

Is there anything specific you want to check at the pictures or just the whole setup? Currently is with the 6 GPU.

A lot of replies, thank you guys.


I haven't changed anything to the setup on the PSU, it's as it came out of the box so I'm not sure if it's multi or single. The HXi required the Link connection enabled/installed to allow you to change this and I haven't done anything for it, so it's not easy to try. Also, you mention you think it's the mobo. I've seen and read here of setups on the Gaming M5 with 7 GPUs, how can it be the mobo? And let's say the first mobo was the case.. 2 more? So 3 in total faulty? Lastly, why would single vs multi rail make such a dramatic difference and cause things to fry?


Yes, it did and it currently does with 6 GPUs. No, all the cables are Corsair cables, they were part of the Corsair package plus the extra ones I bought were from Amazon and they are from Corsair as well (I bought two extra kits to have spare cables to use), I mean they came in a corsair box and bag, I don't think they are counterfeit. I will use a multi meter to measure the output, that was my idea after all this shitfest as well, but I was trying to poke people's brains in case they had a similar experience or any other ideas.

At this point, I have an AXi 1200 and 7 other GPUs waiting to be assembled into another rig, but I'm afraid to try, before I understand what happened. Even if I was trying to draw more power than what the PSU can handle, it should just have shut it down, not fry everything. On the other had, looking at how much power 6 cards are drawing now at the wall, even under-volted, it's about 1080 to 1120.. so I have doubts if it can handle the 7th card now, I was expecting the system to be around 920-950 with 6 cards when I did my calculations. I might have to get a secondary PSU and link them together.

Yeah, but Corsair HX series can be switched to both and it comes set to Multiple.

In case of a single rail setup if the PSU can't deliver as much as you're trying to pull it will just shut down and not burn anything so it has to be something else.

Pretty bad smell and you can see burnt place on mobo.

I would say bad cables or wrong connection...
But only time I saw burn everything was like 8 years ago when my PSU failed only RAM, HDD and fans survived. Since then only parts on mobo burnt they use better protection now. My PC what I'm using when I'm not on laptop has burnt 4pin PWM controller and it was my fault I touched GPU power with metal frame, but GPU has no problem at all
So my toughts are the mobo... also do you use multi or single rail? I was starting thread about this few days ago I have Corsair HX 1200.