Topic: My PSU just had a catastrophic failure (i.e. exploded) (Read 4085 times)

This. I have a Rosewill Fortress series 550watt platinum powering a pair of 6950's and an i7-920, and it doesn't even break 80% load. Amazing PSU for the money.

I don't know from the original post if the four-year-old one was the "Kingwin", or if that is what was ordered, what "exploded" (or even what the actual question is), but from the later post of the amperage on a label, an average Kingwin is probably something like this one:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=155

Note this anomaly they noted:

As promised, the above table shows the 12V rail distribution. What it doesn't show you is that several 12V rails were bridged by solder. 12V1 and 12V2 were combined to one big rail, as were 12V4 and 12V5. Yes, the PCI-E connectors get one big 70A monster rail, almost the whole 12V capacity of the unit.

It looks like that reviewed unit is plain designed stupid. In addition, it shows lots of voltage ripple at high loads, meaning that capacitors are operating near the max of their specs. Throw in cheap Chinese leaky capacitors and that's probably why the original xploded, capacitor plague failure, especially if it ran for a considerable time before dying.

A list of KingWin reviews:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviewdb/PSUs/Kingwin/

Note that they use names like "Lazer", which would be a cool name in 1983.

Thanks for this explanation.

In that case, I'm sorry my mentality bothers you.  I hate to be a bother.  Can't we be friends?  

By the way, don't you think the appropriate time to chime in on a psu choice is when they specifically ask for it, in say a thread such as this one posted 2 1/2 weeks ago?  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/suggestions-on-power-supply-119151

Whereas after the psu has been purchased, at that point wouldn't it be best to just answer the question that was asked? 

Ah, thanks for that. I'm not a hardware junkie .

No, I do not mean that; I specifically stated that 875 was wall-draw. There is a difference between power drawn from the wall, and power delivered to the components of your computer, and PSUs are rated for power delivered to components. A gold rated PSU will run at roughly 87%-90% efficiency (depending on the one you purchase) at > 75% load. I believe the one I had, being one of the most superior models on market, was running close to 89% or so (don't recall where I got that now, so I will take it on faith) -

.89 * 875 * 100 / 750 = 103.833333; or roughly 104% give or take.

Responses like this are part of what annoy me about the OPs model choice (I linked him a review by one of the most reputable PSU info sources detailing his PSU as a "must-pass for 1kw+"). People remain willfully ignorant of things that are so important to them as to seek out assistance. I also linked him a model that would perfectly meet his needs, save him money on his power costs, is a far superior build, as rated by experts, not retards on a forum who say "omgz my PSU didnt blow up so that means its awesomez", and cost roughly the same amount as what he purchased.

So to the OP, no, I don't give a crap about your purchase, but your mentality is what bothers me. But, as P.T. barnum said, you'll never go broke under-estimating the intelligence of people. Words to live by.

I think you meant either 16% above its capacity, or 785W instead of 875:

875 * 100 / 750 = 116.67
785 * 100 / 750 = 104.67

Dont' worry about the naysayers.  The PSU will perform fine.  The only problem I had with one Kingwin was the fan failing.  But then again, I've had Corsair, Silverstone, Antec, PCPC, and countless other PSU fans fail too.

I can see that my choice of PSU (upon the recommendation of multiple established miners on this forum), has clearly upset you.  If I had known you were going to be this distraught I might have asked if you wanted to chip in an extra $50 for me to get a single rail PSU.  So I deeply apologize for upsetting you so deeply.

(By the way, the PSU that assploded was a Corsair.)

i run 4 HD 5830 Xtreme on my 900Watt PSU with nothing else but an hdd attached. (Overclocked, undervolted (yes)). Cant tell power draw because i dont care, but i estimate 600-650 Watt.
Think of getting an airflow for your PSU that gets it cool air, not that hot stuff from you gpus (because they get really hot). My PSU is not mounted near those gpus or in the same case, so it worked for the preowner for years and still works.

It's not that they don't listen, the just can't overcome their learned compulsion to be cheap. Cheap, not thrifty. Always costs them more in the end...

OCP (overcurrent protection) is a common feature in PSUs, however it does not function as I think you are implying; it protects components from current spikes.

There are however also overload protectors, which are essentially fuses, that kick in to protect against draw that is too high on most PSUs.

This is why you rarely see an explosive failure in any quality PSU, even at high draws. If you buy a POS like the OP, well... then who knows what will happen. A quality PSU however can be run at it's full rating 24/7 365 days a year, and it won't bitch. Look for PSUs that are rated for their supply continuous rather than peak wattage.

As I mentioned before, I ran a 750W PSU, with ~875W coming from the wall (4 or 5 heavily overclocked 5870s), which was something like 5% above its rated capacity, and it kept ticking even after weeks of this until I swapped it out for a beefier supply.

I suppose the market needs people who refuse to listen to good advice though, or else all the cutrate vendors would go out of business.

I buy computer power supplies so that I'm drawing at most (during extreme resource utilization) 2/3rd's of their rated wattage.

Overspeced = cooler running/longer life/better efficiency.

Pictures?

Do PSUs all simply fail if driven too hard? If there some type of breaker or fuse that trips on some models if an over-current situation occurs?

And your name is very fitting.

Ta da!  This is the one thing I needed out of this entire thread and it took two pages to get there.  Thanks man +1  Same for gatorhex, +1

Ah.  You're using TDP for your calculation.  Keep in mind that you'll never hit the full TDP rating while mining (especially at stock clocks) because some of the card is unused (especially since there is barely any memory usage).  I run a 71Ghash farm.  A good portion of this farm is 5000 series cards.  On one of my rigs (4x 5870s with 2GB of RAM each), I'm drawing 731 watts at the wall.  This means that I'm using about 660 watts DC from the PSU, and the GPUs are overclocked (900mhz/200mhz/1.1v).  This also means that each card is using around 140 watts DC.  They have a TDP of 220 watts.  That's only 63 percent.

His 3x5830 rig isn't going to consume more than 400 watts DC (assuming the card's GPU is overclocked, the memory is underclocked, and it's undervolted).  A properly made 600ish watt PSU (like a 620 watt Seasonic) will easily handle the load and have plenty of room to breathe.  A "cheapo" 1050 watt PSU *really* shouldn't have a hard time with it.

Hard/DVD drives get SATA connectors (try spread them out over as many wires as possible)

1x Grahics card gets 2x 6-pin PCI-E

2x Graphics cards get 1 x 6-pin PCI-E + a 1x molex to PCI-E adapter. (Spread them out so they are not all on the same wire)

lol..

I have 6 rigs running this exact PSU. and I am able to run 4 gpus on it no problem.

1 GPU on the one PCIe cable (1 cable has 2 pcie power connectors)
1 GPU on the other PCIe cable
1 GPU on the 2 molex cables, place molex to PCIe power adapter on the first molex adapter off the psu
1 GPU on the 2 SATA cables (you'll need SATA to PCIe adapters) Available at meritline. place SATA to PCIe power adapter on the first SATA adapter off the psu

evenly split the hard drives between the 4 molex/sata cables.

Done

My 3x 7950 system can easily pull 625-675 W... 5830 TDP is 170 W x 3 = 510 W, plus another 60-120 W for the board and CPU depending on what he has is 570-630 W.  I always get 20-30% above my intended usage because efficiency is usually highest there and heat production is often less than it would be for a PSU with a lower DC output.  For instance my AX550 with one 6970 on it and a celeron runs much hotter than my OCZ Z-series 850W with the 3x 7950 and a 1055T with 5 disabled cores.