PCA Forums

Like most of you, I leave my pc on most of the time. This morning at 3 am, I smelled burnt electronics and plastic and looked over to see my pc was off. When I peaked inside, there was an orange flame on the back of my Blu-ray drive. I promptly disconnected everything and blew out the flame. I'm assuming my power supply was fried too. I removed the drive and installed a spare Roswell I had laying around. The good news is that the PC turned on. I only have 24 AMP to work with per rail so I was amazed it was enough to power my 1080. I'm not about to try bench marking it though.

I've e-mailed Lite-On but I don't know what I'm expecting. Even if they sent a new drive I'm not using it. What sucks is that now I'm a bit paranoid. A house fire is my worst fear. This is the second time that I've been home to stop one. The first was during high school. I was sitting on the couch and smelled smoke. Mom and I tracked it to the fuel oil furnace. When we opened the door, the bowl (sort of a reservoir for the fuel oil, these furnaces were gravity fed) was engulfed in fire. We got it put out and called the fire department to check everything.

Now I have a decision to make. Do I just buy a new power supply and blu-ray burner or do I get a new pc? To be honest, I don't really trust myself at the moment for some reason to build again. I'd definitely buy one.

Just after I blew it out:


Back of Drive:


Front:


Bottom:



SATA cable and power adapter. I'd wondered if they were the problem but if they shorted, I doubt ther'd be a fire.

Oh crap. That's also a fear of mine, as I believe QC is not a priority these days.

Wow! I would have never thought that the drive would do that unless it was being used at the time. Maybe something in the power supply caused that to happen?

I've been leaving my rig on 24/7 also for the last 3 months. I normally would turn it off on Sunday after leaving it on for the weekend.

The only thing that I can think of aside from the drive itself failing is that I used a molex to SATA for the power. However, you'd think that this would've simply shorted and tripped the power supply.

I can confirm the drive wasn't being used. I'd just watched an hour of an anime a few hours prior. I never leave my Bluray in the drive. As you all know, anime is expensive so I always put it back in it's case when I'm not watching or ripping it.

This is what I've ordered as replacements:

Pioneer external burner.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1

Corsair 850 PS. I was going to go with EVGA but Amazon was out of stock on the 850W model.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01 ... UTF8&psc=1

Just ran it quickly on google and two of the first results I saw involved molex to sata ....

Ack, scary. I'd say there were two culprits: whatever caused the short in the first place, and a failure of the protection circuit in the PSU to trip when the short occurred.

Sure looks like it was the molex to SATA power adapter.

I think you're right FP. Although I've been running that setup for 7 years, I know to never use those adapters again. I think the PSU did trip before my something happened to the rest of the system but not before the fire started. It's just odd to me that that drive would have any current going to it while idle. I'm going external on my drive this go around. Many new cases don't have 5.25 bays anyway so at least I'll be ready when I decide to upgrade. The new Corsair PS I ordered carries a 10 year warranty. Of course that's not helpful if the thing catches fire.

Edit: Just googled SATA Molex Fire. Those results are terrifying. It appears that the contacts can fuse inside under heat and stress. I really thought it was the drive itself upon first inspection.

Apparently this is big problemo for people running mining rigs. couple of vids here.


https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/9 ... x-adapters

I wish I'd known 5 years ago that these were an issue. I'd honestly forgotten I'd used one. On another note, my spare power supply is actually decent. It's a Roswell 600W and can run 50 AMP across the 12V rail. I'm not going to attempt to push it but It's nice to have around as a spare. If it wasn't for dust, I'd also build an open rig. My temps are about 5 C lower with both panels off.

From the forum that wvjohn posted, it seems that these connectors can arc but not immediately trip the power supply.

I'm just glad my stupid mistake didn't cost me a house.

wvjohn wrote:Apparently this is big problemo for people running mining rigs. couple of vids here.


https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/9 ... x-adapters

Thanks for the link. So they fail due to the design of the SATA connector. Interesting. I'm going to go through mine that I have and throw out the bad ones.

All of this is a timely reminder to me to seriously clean out my case. I'll check the sata cables as well. The one that came with my mobo are braided and pretty heavy duty, but I only had a couple like that. It is ridiculous that we are back to having to worry about .02 parts melting 1K+ rigs. Modern life.

1st world problems.

Yeah, DVD/BluRay burners draw a LOT of juice during a burn. Always a good idea to check you connectors while you're in there and make sure nothing looks like it's been melting.

I got my power supply and Burner delivered today. The Power Supply's inner box looked like it had been opened as the security tape was cut. However, everything looked okay and the power supply didn't look like it had been installed. I was reminded of the Love-Hate relationship I have with my case when routing the cables. I hate the grommets and as I'm typing this, I figured out a way to fix them should I care to do so. They keep popping out of place when I feed the cables but are a pain to put back in place. I should've put a few spots of weather strip adhesive around them and let them set. The modular cables made the installation much easier. It was nice to be able to only use the cables I need rather than the Medusa's head of my other power supply. It's quiet as the fan doesn't turn on unless it needs to and seems to be working okay.

The External Blu-Ray Drive I bought reads faster than my Lite On. Discs come up quicker and all of the software I've tried recognizes the drive. I haven't tried burning anything yet. I don't do much of that anyway. The drive is quieter too. I wish the cables were longer though. They look proprietary and include two USB plugs. One is for USB 3.0 and the other is extra power that plugs into USB 2.0. The only other annoyance is the drive didn't include the software on listed on the box. It doesn't matter since I'm probably using a newer version of PowerDVD than was included but it should've been included. It makes me think that someone got into the box or it's a return.