PSA: don't buy aliexpress PCI adapters.

[Lurick]

18 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

What an intelligently designed fire extinguisher then /s. The whole point of a fire extinguisher is to minimize damage (and save lives). Kind of kicks itself in the ass if it puts out the fire but kills all nearby electronics in the process.

The whole point is the minimize FIRE damage AND save lives, fuck the stuff. Seriously, are you that daft? Should it instead ask the fire nicely or should nanobots be summoned to put out the fire and rebuild your stuff or should the neighbor have just let the fire go so WATER could have been sprayed all over the place when the fire department got there along with even more damage in the mean time? To say a FIRE EXTINGUISHER should magically not harm inanimate objects while trying to put out a FIRE is beyond moronic.

[Moonzy]

Man that sucks... I'm glad you're safe and it didn't do as much damage as it could've

 

Hope you recover from it soon man

[Moonzy]

32 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

What an intelligently designed fire extinguisher then /s. The whole point of a fire extinguisher is to minimize damage (and save lives). Kind of kicks itself in the ass if it puts out the fire but kills all nearby electronics in the process.

I disagree, in an emergency situation, possessions shouldn't be cared for

 

If the powder had to be corrosive to be effective against fire to increase the odds of survival, so be it

But if it was corrosive for no good reason then i would agree, it would be a bad design if better alternatives were available

 

Nonetheless, lives comes first and what's done has been done

[Windows7ge]

4 minutes ago, Lurick said:

The whole point is the minimize FIRE damage AND save lives, fuck the stuff. Seriously, are you that daft? Should it instead ask the fire nicely or should nanobots be summoned to put out the fire and rebuild your stuff or should the neighbor have just let the fire go so WATER could have been sprayed all over the place when the fire department got there along with even more damage in the mean time? To say a FIRE EXTINGUISHER should magically not harm inanimate objects while trying to put out a FIRE is beyond moronic.

Woah, calm down there Lurick. Nobody likes a keyboard warrior.

1. I did say "and save lives". It's in parentheses.
2. In the absence of people in danger they're meant to minimize fire damage yes but it adds insult to injury when the fire suppressor causes more damage in the process. We have CO2 fire extinguishers. The situation could have turned out less-bad with one.

Now that's just in hindsight, of course things would have been exponentially worse all around had the neighbor done nothing but I'm making an observational statement how the situation could have turned out better I'm not trying to be an asshole who cares more about material possessions than human life.

[atxcyclist]

That is frightening. Glad no one was hurt and the fire area was minimized with an extinguisher, but what a huge loss of hardware.

[Lurick]

4 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

-snip-

Sorry but the way you said it makes it sound like human life is an afterthought and that possessions should be saved above all else. I'm not trying to be an asshole but the entire way you wrote the post was very tone deaf at the least.

 

I'm glad OP and everyone else is safe though, sure it sucks to lose stuff but at least it wasn't worse.

[Windows7ge]

5 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Sorry but the way you said it makes it sound like human life is an afterthought and that possessions should be saved above all else. I'm not trying to be an asshole but the entire way you wrote the post was very tone deaf at the least.

This isn't anything new for me. I have a tendency to get fixed on one thing and forget the bigger picture. This is only one of many quirks I have that seem to get me in trouble once in a while.

 

Gotta say though, never thought I'd get an ear-full from you. I always took you for the level-headed type...

 

Sorry.

[sub68]

52 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

I disagree, in an emergency situation, possessions shouldn't be cared for

personal safety comes first

possessions go second (unless its PPE)

[aisle9]

4 hours ago, RollinLower said:

So I have a little warning for all of you guys looking at these:

Be careful people!

 

...

 

<goes and hastily throws away the few sets of these he has left>

 

3 hours ago, akio123008 said:

Hmm well it's possible for sure. Especially since it's unlikely anything else caught fire in there. Shame we don't have some footage of it happening, I'm quite curious what exactly happened in there. 

I actually really am looking for my little stockpile of them to throw them away. If I can track them down, I'll peel the foam off and take a look at how janky everything behind it is.

 

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

What an intelligently designed fire extinguisher then /s. The whole point of a fire extinguisher is to minimize damage (and save lives). Kind of kicks itself in the ass if it puts out the fire but kills all nearby electronics in the process.

I mean, I get it, but I'd rather have a home with no computer than no home with no computer 

[Moonzy]

5 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

If I can track them down, I'll peel the foam off and take a look at how janky everything behind it is.

Do show, I wanna see how thin those traces are that's supposed to carry 10A

[jiyeon]

Shit, sorry to hear that happened. That foam was waiting for the opportunity to strike, it seems.

The idea of re-routing the cables underneath was cool on paper, but clearly in practise, it's gone exactly how 2020 would have wanted it go.

 

Happy to hear your stuff is insured though, 2020 can't take away absolutely everything.

[Bitter]

 

Found the pictures! That was running a P106-100 at 120W.

[aisle9]

31 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Do show, I wanna see how thin those traces are that's supposed to carry 10A

I can't find them anywhere, and it's driving me nuts. If I come across them tonight, I'll peel the foam off of whatever I have so we can all marvel at the level of firebending they can achieve.

[DoctorNick]

OMG, luckily no one was hurt. RIP PC and server. Hopefully you got insurance. Just a bad time to replace all that stuff. I feel for you.

[Sauron]

Wow, a real horror story... I'm sorry for your hardware but I'm glad your entire house didn't go up in flames...

 

I wonder if perhaps the loop leaked and caused the short? It seems weird that a simple part like this would just do that.

[Jeppes]

Where do you live? Will you be held responsible to pay back the insurance company? Thats how it works here if you import stuff yourself. You can of course go to China and sue them

[TetraSky]

27 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Found the pictures! That was running a P106-100 at 120W.

Looks like they cheaped out on the cable itself and it couldn't handle the current that was passing through it. That's rough... That's the thing with cheap cabling from China... They often cheap out on the copper, while putting a thick plastic sleeve. This gives the illusion that the gauge is bigger than it really is. Seen a few of those in the past year during my electronic classes. Cables claiming to be 20AWG, but in reality are closer to 26AWG. They basically became heating elements after putting much power through them than they could handle, melting the sleeves.

[whm1974]

Oops I thought I already Replied to this Topic but it doesn't look l did.

 

OP thank you for starting this Topic and informing us about what happen. Not that ever ordered anything from that Company before or that matter China. Now I am thinking think I will never do either.

 

Aside from a Chinese MIPS based laptop or MiniPC. Preferably not from the same Company that the OP got his adapters from.

 

However I much get a RISC-5 based computer instead.

[sub68]

7 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Not that ever ordered anything from that Company before or that matter China

most computer components sadly come from china

its on the companies rep for good

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Looks like they cheaped out on the cable itself and it couldn't handle the current that was passing through it. That's rough... That's the thing with cheap cabling from China... They often cheap out on the copper, while putting a thick plastic sleeve. This gives the illusion that the gauge is bigger than it really is. Seen a few of those in the past year during my electronic classes. Cables claiming to be 20AWG, but in reality are closer to 26AWG. They basically became heating elements after putting much power through them than they could handle, melting the sleeves.

 

I never took pictures of my TEC roasting cables. # 12715. I've had a few of them. 2 super important things I noticed with big draw, The connections need to be solid and wire gauge.  I've never left a TEC unattended, and never will. 

 

Good on the OP! Thanks for posting this! And damn sweet looking rig too. What a shame.

[Bitter]

So now that I'm at an actual keyboard I can type.

 

Likely what happened is the contacts in the power bridges or the traces on the circuit board were woefully inadequate for the power being drawn. I would suspect the contact terminals as they'll heat cycle and get loose over time and then burn a little, create high resistance, then get really hot and start to melt things or catch them on fire even at fairly low power draw. I see this ALL THE TIME in cars actually, and at around 12V too! They probably did not use any fire retardant chemicals in the plastics of the connectors and I'm sure the foam backing and it's adhesive wasn't fire retardant either.

 

So was your cat OK?

[aisle9]

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

Do show, I wanna see how thin those traces are that's supposed to carry 10A

Huge images in spoiler. The two I found use different designs, as you'll see.

 

Spoiler

 

No idea where the rest are, if I have any left at all.

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Huge images in spoiler. The two I found use different designs, as you'll see.

 

  Hide contents

 

No idea where the rest are, if I have any left at all.

Honestly the traces themselves doesn't look too bad, but they're awfully close to one another

OP's might've bridged and shorted, causing the fire

Because he said it was at idle so the current through the pins wasn't too high anyways

 

But I'm curious as to why the OCP in psu didn't trip...

[aisle9]

5 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Honestly the traces themselves doesn't look too bad, but they're awfully close to one another

OP's might've bridged and shorted, causing the fire

Because he said it was at idle so the current through the pins wasn't too high anyways

 

But I'm curious as to why the OCP in psu didn't trip...

Where are the traces on the smooth-backed one?

 

Also, the foam is definitely flammable. Don't ask me how I found that out.

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Where are the traces on the smooth-backed one?

Now that you mentioned it... Where is it

Is it in the other side?