loose connections cause arc and melting. corrosions to the cable can occur over time.
also if you run at freq 237 or higher the s-3's pull juice at 400 watts. so 800 watts on a 850 watt psu is hard on the psu . do it for months and the psu cap's age. So after 6 months you have maybe a 780 watt psu.
I run 2 s-3's on 1000 watt psu. a seasonic platinum been running about 2 or 3 days less then a year. 24/7/365 no worries.
check this review
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=126
on page 2 when you go up to 849 watts dc the efficiency drops like a mofo. down from 83% to 80%
BTW 83% sucks and that is at 681 watt dc .
I know 2 s-3s pull more then that my guess is you pushed it too hard too long.
Topic: Hot cables on S3, what am I doing wrong? - page 2. (Read 1905 times)
Possible the "other" connector on the board with the fried connector got loose.
How did you have the power plugged in? Did you have 2 pcie plugs plugged in from same power cord on each side? IE one power cord and split into 2 pcie plugs.
The corsair has 4 individual cables with pcie connectors coming out of it, i have two in each miner. I don't know about the rails on the inside of the PSU though. They may be basically together inside the case. Im going to switch to those Dells as soon as I can get some PCIe cables in.I am thinking that there was a voltage surge and your PSU got damaged and let too much current into the miner. Generally its not a good idea to keep miners running during a storm.
Yes I agree that is probably what happened to the one with the board that quit working. Its in the server room at my office. Living in FL, I can't unplug during every storm or it would never be plugged in LOL.Since all the heat seems to be concentrated at the connection you should of had a bad connection on the pin or corrosion that caused them to over heat. S3+ should not have problems like that even with 18 AWG.
I pay pretty close attention to detail and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary on the connector or the pins. I also thought an s3+ shouldn't have problems like that on an 850 watt psu, granted there we're 2 s3s on this psu but still. 
How did you have the power plugged in? Did you have 2 pcie plugs plugged in from same power cord on each side? IE one power cord and split into 2 pcie plugs.
Since all the heat seems to be concentrated at the connection you should of had a bad connection on the pin or corrosion that caused them to over heat. S3+ should not have problems like that even with 18 AWG.
I am thinking that there was a voltage surge and your PSU got damaged and let too much current into the miner. Generally its not a good idea to keep miners running during a storm.
Change your cable for 16 awg. Use a kill-a-watt to monitor if your miner is working properly.
I have an S3+ and an S1 converted to S3. We had a storm and my hash rate dropped so I went to see what was up and I found this....
Power supply is a Corsair TX850 btw.
So the drop in hash rate was the S1->S3 conversion apparently had one of the boards fail most likely from the storm. The S3+ power cable was way hot when I touched it and I unplugged it and the the connector basically fell apart. Now the 850 should be plenty to run these two. What am I doing wrong here? The burnt ends were the negative cables if that helps.
Now see this pic:
This is the S1/S3, its connectors seemed to get a lil warm, enough to discolor the plastic but they weren't very warm to the touch at the moment but the warm was on the positive side. Not negative like the other miner. I don't get it.
Lastly, I'm going to change to these PSUs with these adapters.
What gauge wires should I be using and how many PCIe connections should i take off each of these Dell PSUs?
Thanks for the help
Power supply is a Corsair TX850 btw.
So the drop in hash rate was the S1->S3 conversion apparently had one of the boards fail most likely from the storm. The S3+ power cable was way hot when I touched it and I unplugged it and the the connector basically fell apart. Now the 850 should be plenty to run these two. What am I doing wrong here? The burnt ends were the negative cables if that helps.
Now see this pic:
This is the S1/S3, its connectors seemed to get a lil warm, enough to discolor the plastic but they weren't very warm to the touch at the moment but the warm was on the positive side. Not negative like the other miner. I don't get it.
Lastly, I'm going to change to these PSUs with these adapters.
What gauge wires should I be using and how many PCIe connections should i take off each of these Dell PSUs?
Thanks for the help
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