Power cable melted

[Moragor]

Not sure where to post this best, it's kinda PSU related.

I just spent the last five hours troubleshooting my PC, finding out that one of my GPU power cables melted which seems to have caused a brown out whenever I started a 3D application.

 

 

This is a genuine Cablemod cable which was powering a GTX 1080Ti without overclock. All three 12V wires melted on the PSU side. The center one (2nd connector pin from the top) was the worst, the wire came right off. The top two connector pin housings melted too and the topmost one broke off and is partially stuck in the PSU connector. The PSU (Corsair AX 1200i) seems to be fine, it passed its self test.

My question now is, how likely is this to happen? Did I just get a bad cable? I participated in the LTT Folding (at home) month 2019 and the GPU ran at 100% for ~14 hours a day for 35-ish days, could this have been too much?

In the end I'm glad nothing caught fire.

[seon123]

Were you using daisy chained connectors on the GPU side, or a separate cable for each connector? For GPUs with a TDP above 225W, you should really use separate cables. 

[Jumballi]

Either the gpu got too hot and melted the cable, this has happened before

or

the cable didn’t make proper contact with the psu, leading to electricity jumping through the air, to reach the gpu pins, heating it up.

[Founders]

This happened to me once with a GTX 590. I was using two separate 8-pin connectors, no daisy chaining, they took my card out with it. I literally walked away for 10 minutes and when I came back the smell was horrible, I'm surprised you didn't smell anything burning. I stopped using cable extensions after that and it hasn't happened since. 

[Guest]

I had 4 builds in the folding event. Each used @CableMod standard or pro kits. Each ran 24/7. I don't think simply being a CableMod cable was the culprit, but I've tagged them so that they could possibly shed some light on the situation.

[Moragor]

1 hour ago, seon123 said:

Were you using daisy chained connectors on the GPU side, or a separate cable for each connector? For GPUs with a TDP above 225W, you should really use separate cables. 

I used one cable for both connectors. Linus did it so I thought it's OK. Anyways, I replaced it with two cables with one 6+2 connector each. Thanks for the tip.

 

34 minutes ago, Caroline said:

High current, high resistivity and low quality materials being sold (and priced) as "premium".

 

Peel it off and see if conductor is copper or alum/alloy, if it looks like copper also scratch it a bit with a razor blade to see if it's only a layer trying to disguise a cheaper material.

It seems to be real copper, it doesn't have that weird bending behavior aluminium wires do.

[manikyath]

19 hours ago, Moragor said:

This is a genuine Cablemod cable

contact cablemod?

[Guest]

20 hours ago, Moragor said:

Not sure where to post this best, it's kinda PSU related.

I just spent the last five hours troubleshooting my PC, finding out that one of my GPU power cables melted which seems to have caused a brown out whenever I started a 3D application.

 

 

This is a genuine Cablemod cable which was powering a GTX 1080Ti without overclock. All three 12V wires melted on the PSU side. The center one (2nd connector pin from the top) was the worst, the wire came right off. The top two connector pin housings melted too and the topmost one broke off and is partially stuck in the PSU connector. The PSU (Corsair AX 1200i) seems to be fine, it passed its self test.

My question now is, how likely is this to happen? Did I just get a bad cable? I participated in the LTT Folding (at home) month 2019 and the GPU ran at 100% for ~14 hours a day for 35-ish days, could this have been too much?

In the end I'm glad nothing caught fire.

Was this an extension cable or a replacement of the original cable?

 

[CableMod]

On 12/17/2019 at 5:36 PM, Moragor said:

Not sure where to post this best, it's kinda PSU related.

I just spent the last five hours troubleshooting my PC, finding out that one of my GPU power cables melted which seems to have caused a brown out whenever I started a 3D application.

 

 

This is a genuine Cablemod cable which was powering a GTX 1080Ti without overclock. All three 12V wires melted on the PSU side. The center one (2nd connector pin from the top) was the worst, the wire came right off. The top two connector pin housings melted too and the topmost one broke off and is partially stuck in the PSU connector. The PSU (Corsair AX 1200i) seems to be fine, it passed its self test.

My question now is, how likely is this to happen? Did I just get a bad cable? I participated in the LTT Folding (at home) month 2019 and the GPU ran at 100% for ~14 hours a day for 35-ish days, could this have been too much?

In the end I'm glad nothing caught fire.

@Moragor definitely shouldn't happen regardless of the scenario as our cables are used in 24/7 test labs and fully capable of operating in such conditions. Please email Support@CableMod.com so we can investigate this further and have a replacement sent out.