Topic: Started rig on fire, feedback requested (Read 264 times)

Decided to look it up... I knew it had to come with 4x pcie cables since I had 8 of them... they come with 4 even though their is only 2 pcie connectors on the psu.... like I said shit was sketchy back then lol. It does have overvolt and overload protection. Still trying to understand how I connect these things lol I’m not in the office no more but I’m 90% sure all the pcie cables are 8pin and there is only 2x 8pin connectors the psu unless the thing has connectors somewhere besides the back of it lol.

4x 8pin pcie
8x 6pin pcie
12x SATA

Too bad it’s only silver 80+ I only run titanium 240v on any of my 8x rigs.  Was only running those crap raidmax on that computer because I use that computer as a daily computer mainly and only have 120v in the office.  But those are getting retired tommorow anyhow just not worth running like u said

Thanks your right it’s not worth running these older psus. Makes me wonder if my old 1500w silverstone had protection.  Haven’t used it in a long time was thinking of pulling it out of my old case , will have to look into it before I waste my time.  Also have to see how many pcie slots it had.  It was definetly Jade badass cause I remember that it was advertised 1500w on the box and it was specifically advertising it’s continuous watts which is the only time I’ve actually seen that.  It says somewhere on the box 1600w peak. 

Look for one that specifically says Short Circuit Protection.  All major brands should have it.  Trust me, I know from experience.

Fried hundreds of dollars , maybe thousand+, worth of parts over the years.  Took me a few motherboards to realize the faults all happened when connected to the same Ultra power supply.  Made before short-circuit protection.  Back in the day Ultra was the shitz and only available from Tiger Direct (CompUSA).  First brand with fully modular cables.  Connectors on both ends of cables looked the same (except SATA).  They obviously patented it; that's why everyone else has the same 6-pin connectors on the PSU.

Without short-circuit protection, there could be a fault and the PSU will push through it, burning anything in its way.  With the protection, the PSU will make a soft click sound then nothing until reset from the main power switch on the back.

everything was wired fine.  Well technically anyhow lol... fan jerk was from the way these old PSU splitters work.  Kept happening and I agree with you on not liking it anyhow and changed to a new splitter with no fuse and it went away.  Only problem was trusting a 6pin to molex Chinese POS adapter.  Lesson?  Throw old PSU’s out or only hook 1 GPU per PSU when their is only 2 pcie connectors.  I’ve always refused to use a 6pin to molex or any adapter on a computer that changes it from one thing to another but today I decided what the hell, long as it’s not 6pin to SATA lol.  and I learned why I never used an adapter before.  I’ve thrown my hundreds of adapters out that I’ve just let collect in a just in case box.  I had a bad feeling from start as soon as I decided to use the 6pin to molex, even brought the fire extinguisher into room before pressing power.  Luckily I was able to blow it out and now have to soak my computer in chemicals lol.

^^ This....

It's obviously not the PSU. You messed up the wiring. You should have taken the first warning (fan jerk/flash), but you obviously did not. The best rule you need to learn with rigs (and computers): if anything doesn't look normal on first power up, do not proceed, do not push any buttons. Unplug everything, get your multimeter and check your wiring for shorts. That will save you many buck$$.

Everything seems to work still from the original psu.  Don’t know if it hurt my new 1080 yet and not sure about the new 2TB hard drive.  It’s not showing in device manager at all no matter how hard I try but I really have no ideal if it was good to start off either.  Doubting it got hurt, so either it will work when I get reliable psu in or it never worked.  I bought it like 3 years ago and just now found it because we moved right after I got it.  It was in a storage tote so I didn’t have super high hopes for it

Haha I totally agree I’m very surprised.  If I was suing EVGA or seasonic or something I would of understood this thing not blowing up 4 years ago but when I saw it was raidmax lol.  Funny thing is I have 60x brand new 850w seasonic titanium’s sitting in my basement and I’m monkeying around with these just because I don’t want to rewire a few wires lol.  I still don’t want to so my new plan is to go back to what was working and leave it be until I decide to switch psus.

Junk that PSU at once and buy a better one... EVGA or Corsair.... Nothing else!

The 24 pin splitter on their 2nd psu end seems to be:

15pin: ground
16pin: power

1pin: power that runs into top of a 10w block (fuse I would assume)
3pin: ground that runs into bottom of 10w block.

With the fuse I assume this is better than the classic 24pin splitter but not sure since it powers up for a millisecond so not sure which would be better to use

Well, in my personal experience Raidmax is utter crap, so I'm mildly surprised it didn't catch fire 4 years ago the way you had it set up. :/

Raidmax Rx-850AE

Decided I will also junk the entire riser, usb cable and pcie cable as well just in case any of those where damaged from the piece of crap 6pin to molex

What is the brand and model of PSU?

Update: I just inspected it and it is actually the 6pin to molex wire that caught on fire. The one thing that I was very weary about from the start. Guess I’ll hook it up with the second 8pin to 6pin pcie connector and only be able to connect 1 gpu to the psu. and get some 1060(6gb) cards to connect to it instead. Or just sell these pieces of junk and use psus with 9x pcie connectors like all my new rigs lol.

So I decided to finally try to get my old rig hooked up with some more video cards. I hadn’t ran it in almost 4 years until December 2017. In December I got it running again on just 1 video card and 1 psu and a hd. It used” to run 6x R7970 on 2x 850w psu. Last month I connected a gtx 1050 as well. A few weeks ago I hooked up a cdrom that was coming off my hd SATA with no issues but when I plugged in a new SATA cable and hooked the cdrom to it somehow the cdrom never worked again. It was also difficult to plug in the SATA cable into the back of the psu also. But that could just be how difficult those psus always where but almost made me feel like I was trying to get it to click in while compressing dust lol.

Anyhow today I make the courageous attempt to plug the 2nd psu 24 pin into the empty connector since I never removed the 2 psu splitter. I plugged in a new 1080 with the 1 cable that splits to a 8 and 6 pin ( cables it came with and I always used in that rig) then I plugged a powered riser into a 6pin to molex cable which I then plugged the molex end into a molex to psu 6 pin. I flipped the back of the second psu on and one of the gpus flashed, one that’s not connected and the fan moded for a millisecond on the psu. I found this odd but figured the flash was just the cards logo lighting up and shutting off immditaly because the psu sent power to the motherboard for a millisecond. I flip the main psu on and press the manual power button and.... “loud pop” and small but quick spreading fire from what looked like the manual power button cable... I haven’t checked yet because the smell is horrible in their. I was lucky enough to be able to blow the fire out quickly and shut power off on the back of the psus (computer looked and sounded like it was still booting fine, although I didn’t look at the screen to see before shutting the psus down...but why in hell would the power button cable catch fire... I also hooked up a new 2TB HD at the same time but that was to the old power supply on the same SATA cable as the old HD.

Like I said it was 4 years ago so I don’t remember exactly how I had this computer running back then but I can tell you it amazes me that it did run 24/7 mining 6x gpus or that it even even started and I’m more amazed I get a fire now that it’s hooked up way better... itnhad 6x 7970 with 6 unpowered risers first of all... secondly there are only 2 pcie cable slots on the back of each psu. Like I said they are 8pin to 8 pin + 6 pin but even then that only accounts for 4 video cards. I have no clue how I connected the other 2 lol. The best guess I have is that I had plugged the extra 8 pin cpu into a gpu on both psus because they both have 2 psu 8pin cables that are hardwired. And I guess maybe I used an adapter to turn that 8pin psu into a 8pin + 6pin on top of it lol. So as you can see I had 6 gpus working under extremely hazardous conditions and somehow I get a fire by running a 7970 and 1050 with unpowered risers and a new 1080 on a 2nd psu... note the 1050 and 7970 has beeen running on the main psu with unpowered risers for a month so I didn’t bother changing them.

Any ideals? I don’t know what exactly caused it so I don’t know if I should try to turn that second psu on again (assuming all components still work). I have to assume that the 2nd psu or the 24 pin connector are at fault here since psu2 like I said had sent power to mobo and moved the fan a tiny bit. I was gonna use a new 24 pin connector just because I have it but it was very hard to get to the 24 pin on the mobo to switch it so I just left it. It’s “different” looking then new age splitters. Has like 2 wires running to it like newer ones but then 2 looping out of it into a block. Wires go in and then the 2 come out. I don’t know how to explain it but like I said it worked 4 years ago... if anyone has any feedback please let me know.