Molex to PCI-e adapter melted

[BCMR_442]

So recently I purchased an rx570 4gb [MSI gaming X] and realised the pc’s psu had no PCI-e power connectors, so I got a dual molex to 8 pin adapter and all was good. Then about 30 minutes into using the card there is a burnt plastic smell coming coming directly from the GPU, I power it off and see that the some wires on the molex to PCI-e adapter have melted and was the probable cause of the smell. (although the smell did seem to be coming directly from the GPU). While testing the card only drawed 120w and the psu I’m using is 420w 

My question is could there be any sort of damage to the card due to the molex adapter wires literally fusing together and potentially short circuiting??

[GenericFanboy]

Well, Did your screen flicker/turn off/etc (bad stuff)

 

if no: Probs fine. Replace the cable

 

If yes: rip.

[Kilrah]

You just do NOT use an old PSU with no PCIe connector with a high draw card.

 

[minibois]

12 minutes ago, BCMR_442 said:

and realised the pc’s psu had no PCI-e power connectors,

I wish the story from here on went to "so I purchased a new PSU", sadly it didn't

13 minutes ago, BCMR_442 said:

While testing the card only drawed 120w and the psu I’m using is 420w 

PCIE 6+2 pin is rated for 150W, so perhaps it was trying to draw more through a cable not meant for it? Molex adapters aren't known to be super high quality.

14 minutes ago, BCMR_442 said:

My question is could there be any sort of damage to the card due to the molex adapter wires literally fusing together and potentially short circuiting??

Hopefully not.. But I am not sure on that.

I would at least visually check the videocard to see if something looks 'off'. Especially near the power connector.

[Sir0Tek]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

You just do NOT use an old PSU with no PCIe connector with a high draw card.

 

This. It's an 8pin PCIe connector plugged to 2x molex, the cable seems to be quite thin (and cheap?). I am not surprised of the result.

[mariushm]

You'll rarely get damage due to power supply shorting.

The power supply should shut down first or the wires will melt. The video card would simply stop working because the power is too low or you would get blue screen / crash because the video card stops working and the operating system can't talk to it anymore (as if you pulled out the video card from the slot)

 

You have a cheap adapter cable with thin cables which are probably not even 100% copper.

You have a video card that consumes up to around 170w, 120w+ of those being taken through those that 8 pin connector.

So basically, you're shoving 10A of current through two wires - normally if the wires are proper AWG18 full copper it would be fine, but I suspect those wires are made with a few copper and a lot of steel or aluminum thin wires, because steel or aluminum is cheaper.

 

[Turbof1]

I heard about this before. Normally molex adapters are fine, but there are cheap and poorly made ones in circulation. If this happens, they usually melt around the connector, but in your case it is the wires

 

Your card is fine. It drew the power that melted  the cables, but the GPU is build to have that kind of watts. As people above mentioned, the issue is the quality of the adapters.

 

Consider yourself lucky though. That could have been fire damage on components. My advice is to blacklist whichever place you got those connectors and go to a proper hardware store to ask for these. If possible even, try to  ask for a sata to pcie adapter.  Those have a better reputation, although you can never exclude issues with those or any other adapter.

 

Above all, get a proper psu.