PSA: don't buy aliexpress PCI adapters.

[Bitter]

23 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

I'm a diesel tech. I've seen quite a bit of electrical issues, but none that burned down a truck. 

 

But I have seen PSUs, Video cards and mainboards catch fire. Typically at the VRMs though. There was an old HOF card that was notorious for it actually. I can't remember which Gen NV it was off my head r/n though.

I've seen some aftermarket audio cabling get darn close to burning down a vehicle. Recently had a Suzuki with a 9007 that had ash inside the bulb base from the connector burning. Cars, trucks, and big equipment seem to be built with the idea that a hot part should not burn them to the ground. Electronics on the other hand and especially parts of unknown quality...they seem a bit more flammable for some reason. I did have an old Maxtor IDE drive catch fire one when the spindle motor drew too many amps through the MOFSET, thankfully the drive way laying out of the case and the loud snap caught my gaze.

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Bitter said:

I've seen some aftermarket audio cabling get darn close to burning down a vehicle. Recently had a Suzuki with a 9007 that had ash inside the bulb base from the connector burning. Cars, trucks, and big equipment seem to be built with the idea that a hot part should not burn them to the ground. Electronics on the other hand and especially parts of unknown quality...they seem a bit more flammable for some reason. I did have an old Maxtor IDE drive catch fire one when the spindle motor drew too many amps through the MOFSET, thankfully the drive way laying out of the case and the loud snap caught my gaze.

Generally, a headlamp wire doesn't burn down cars and trucks. Essentially the same gauge as a PSU or close enough to it. 

 

But audio cabling from a car battery with enough current to weld with?? Oh for sure. 

 

So maybe 8 burning cables on a PSU could catch all of them in the vicinity on fire, perhaps melt some of the acrylic. I don't know how the wires where in correlation to the acrylic to actually catch it on fire like that. And I'd guess it was the lower card that caught fire first. 

 

Any ways, it was just thoughts. I'm not saying the connector did not start the fire, I'm just trying to rule in and out different possibilities. 

 

I have some old acrylic around here on a GPU somewhere. Could try some experiments, but really I don't have the time this weekend.

 

Let me edit:

 

I would like to see a picture of the rig with the side panel off before it was tossed on the floor and parts missing. We aren't seeing that moment in time with the provided pictures we have atm.

 

additional comment:

 

After doing a quick search how hot a BIC lighter can get, a single flame, can range from 1900 - 4000 degrees (a max of 2200c).

 

So the experiment would be to take a BIC lighter to a corner of acrylic block with a water block running water through it. 

 

A bit of factors to take into consideration,

 

air flow can lower or raise a flames temp.

The copper portion of the waterblock should be cool if the gpu is idle and water is flowing.

The Fire was in direct contact to the acrylic.

 

Some other questions,

 

did the fire start from a little foam pad? Or was it the plastic connector and PSU wires? 

If the first card started on fire first and heat rises, was it hot enough to heat the lower card all the way through the back side of PCB, through the waterblock and then melt the bottom card.

Where is the PSU located. (Mine is under my board and GPUs....)

 

ect ect.

[SPARC]

AliExpress is straight up garbage. Wish is merely an AliExpress reseller. Never touching them with a 100 foot pole.

 

I'm so glad you had insurance to cover it, but I hate seeing all that equipment get destroyed...

4 hours ago, whm1974 said:

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.

Does anyone even use MIPS anymore? And isn't RISC-V too young for mainstream use yet?

[whm1974]

4 minutes ago, Ionosphere said:

AliExpress is straight up garbage. Wish is merely an AliExpress reseller. Never touching them with a 100 foot pole.

 

I'm so glad you had insurance to cover it, but I hate seeing all that equipment get destroyed...

Does anyone even use MIPS anymore? And isn't RISC-V too young for mainstream use yet?

SiFive recently released both a New SoC and a Embedded mITX board with both the SOC and Memory. It does have a PCIe x8 Slot on the board and at lease one M.2 socket/slot either PCI x4 or SATA. I don't recall.

 

Look here if you want:

www.sifive.com

 

I don't if the Chinese are current even Fabbing any MIPS CPUs or SOCs, much less any products using them. I probably want to any due to only a few Linux and BSD Distros even support MIPS at all.

 

Aside from Debian and NetBSD that is. 

 

 

[SPARC]

Just now, whm1974 said:

SiFive recently released both a New SoC and a Embedded mITX board with both the SOC and Memory. It does have a PCIe x8 Slot on the board and at lease one M.2 socket/slot either PCI x4 or SATA. I don't recall.

 

Look here if you want:

sifive.com

$680? Not worth it unless you have money to waste. I'm worrying about the lack of rear I/O and non-upgradeable memory. And that PCIe x16 slot looks out of place on a board that doesn't have many display drivers written for it.

 

Here's to hoping some maniac writes translation software that translates x86/ARM to RISC-V instructions.

[whm1974]

1 minute ago, Ionosphere said:

$680? Not worth it unless you have money to waste. I'm worrying about the lack of rear I/O and non-upgradeable memory. And that PCIe x16 slot looks out of place on a board that doesn't have many display drivers written for it.

 

Here's to hoping some maniac writes translation software that translates x86/ARM to RISC-V instructions.

I think current AMD Radeon Drivers does have support for the board. Inclusing the Previous Board Sifive had. Again if you want look....

[SPARC]

5 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

I think current AMD Radeon Drivers does have support for the board. Inclusing the Previous Board Sifive had. Again if you want look....

The board would be nice for an expensive experimental RISC-V development PC. Props to AMD for supporting RISC-V.

[whm1974]

1 minute ago, Ionosphere said:

The board would be nice for an expensive experimental RISC-V development PC. Props to AMD for supporting RISC-V.

The Driver Code is FOSS after all. either the RISC-V Foundation or Sifive did the Compiling of the Driver. Perhaps both of them? Or even what Distros that support the RISC-V ISA.

[RollinLower]

6 hours ago, Bitter said:

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?

The cats thankfully had a way to escape the house! They likely fled as soon as the fire alarms went off. Fire alarms are the real heroes in this story.

[SPARC]

2 hours ago, whm1974 said:

The Driver Code is FOSS after all. either the RISC-V Foundation or Sifive did the Compiling of the Driver. Perhaps both of them? Or even what Distros that support the RISC-V ISA.

Seems like the only two thus far are Debian and Fedora.

 

*tips fedora* m’icroarchitecture

[akio123008]

10 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

I don't know how the wires where in correlation to the acrylic to actually catch it on fire like that. And I'd guess it was the lower card that caught fire first. 

You keep on going about how the heat of the electrical fault wouldn't be enough to melt the acrylic, but may I remind you of the fact that the whole damn pc was on fire?

 

Pretty possible the acrylic only melted a few minutes later when the computer was fully ablaze.

[Prodigy_Smit]

I can only say F. 

Also you are damn lucky that your neighbors caught that or your whole building might be gone.

 

Hope the cat is safe.

[RollinLower]

17 minutes ago, Prodigy_Smit said:

I can only say F. 

Also you are damn lucky that your neighbors caught that or your whole building might be gone.

 

Hope the cat is safe.

Yeah the neighbor is a hero in my book. I already brought him some nice whiskey as appreciation.

 

The cats thankfully had a way out of the house(kitty door) so they're both safe! They probably ran out the house when the fire alarms went off. It also took a little while for them to be at ease again in the apartment so they got a pretty good scare out of it as well.

[octothorpe_rekt]

Electricians ITT:  I have these exact parts in hand and I'm going to pick up a multimeter in a few days; I have one 9K13 and three 9K14 parts.

 

Can anyone tell me what I can check to see what could be the issue with the 9K14 component?  Would I be looking for continuity between the hot and ground pins from the male to female connectors, or continuity between the hot and ground pins on the same connector?

 

Also, would replacing the foam pads with some other material make the parts safer?

 

Is it at all possible that this is a manufacturing fluke and while some parts may be a fire hazard, others are safe?

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, octothorpe_rekt said:

Would I be looking for continuity between the hot and ground pins from the male to female connectors, or continuity between the hot and ground pins on the same connector?

Honestly if a multimeter could find continuity, your PC wouldn't even boot due to short circuit protections.

I'm thinking more of a high amp test

 

Buttt

4 minutes ago, octothorpe_rekt said:

Is it at all possible that this is a manufacturing fluke and while some parts may be a fire hazard, others are safe?

I'm thinking it's a manufacturing defect more than a design flaw... Or it would've been all over the news if most of these would combust.

 

Not saying a design flaw can't make chances of manufacturing defect higher.

[GDRRiley]

17 hours ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

At one time you could get Halon filled fire extinguishers.

They existed in two forms - as Halon 1211, BromoChlorodiFluoromethane (CBrClF2) also known as 'BCF', and as Halon 1301, Bromotrifluoromethane (CBrF3).

They basically expelled a invisible gas that would remove oxygen from the fire causing it to smother. No messy corrosive powder or foam to deal with.

Problem was the gas removed any breathable oxygen from the area and the end user risked certain death if not used properly.

you still can get fire extinguishers like that but its halotron now. Halon isn't a great thing to have getting into the air so lots of places have limited its use.

I'd get something like a Amerex 397 - 11 lb Halotron Fire Extinguisher or Amerex 397 - 11 lb Halotron Fire Extinguisher.

[octothorpe_rekt]

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Honestly if a multimeter could find continuity, your PC wouldn't even boot due to short circuit protections.

I'm thinking more of a high amp test

 

Yeah, I was thinking about that.  Elsewhere ITT a poster mentioned that the PSU that OP used doesn't have HCP on the secondary rail(s) (or at least, multi-rail PSUs commonly don't have HCP on secondaries) - would that explain it failing to detect a short?  No, right?

 

How could one do a high amp test, short of putting the adapters in, running FurMark, and watching the temp like a hawk?

 

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

I'm thinking it's a manufacturing defect more than a design flaw... Or it would've been all over the news if most of these would combust.

 

Not saying a design flaw can't make chances of manufacturing defect higher.

I was thinking about that too.  This is such a niche part.  Only SFFPC case users, such as myself in the NCase M1, or people who are really anal about cable management for aesthetic purposes and similarly constrained from a more traditional cable routing, would even look for these parts.  So could it be a design defect that only shows itself under high enough power draw by the GPU, or when a certain temp threshold is passed and the foam backing melts or shifts or straight up bursts into flame or some other condition.  And genuinely, how many of these parts could possibly exist in the wild?  It's not a standard part that most PC builders would need to buy, and the PC building crowd is already a small set.

 

My brain is dropping straight into the Drake Equation.  Multiply the number of PCs are built per year by the fraction of those that are built with a small enough case or a tall enough card or whatever other condition to inspire someone to need this part by the number of these parts that use the 9K14 component by the fraction that are connected to a GPU drawing enough power to burn through whatever protection the component does have, and you get 1 house fire per year.  Not enough to make the news, right?

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, beerdrunkmonk said:

This is good advice. I have a few clean agent fire extinguishers around the house, some of which I found on eBay at a fraction of the new price. Look for Amerex Halon 1211, Amerex or Buckeye Halotron I, or Ansul CleanGuard (FE-36). If you buy on eBay just make sure they have inspection tags and are fully charged. At the same time, it's still good to keep a classic ABC monoammonium phosphate type as no other handheld has better fire suppression ability, especially if something in the class A category catches fire.

Halon 1211 are hard to find now and really should be replaced with something using Halotron I.

I wouldn't get fire extinguishers from ebay but thats mostly because I can get them at just over cost.
yes you still do need class A but for B and C Halon/Halotron I works great.

[RollinLower]

43 minutes ago, beerdrunkmonk said:

This is good advice. I have a few clean agent fire extinguishers around the house, some of which I found on eBay at a fraction of the new price. Look for Amerex Halon 1211, Amerex or Buckeye Halotron I, or Ansul CleanGuard (FE-36). If you buy on eBay just make sure they have inspection tags and are fully charged. At the same time, it's still good to keep a classic ABC monoammonium phosphate type as no other handheld has better fire suppression ability, especially if something in the class A category catches fire. 

 

Sorry for your loss, OP. You've got great neighbors. 

Definitely great advice, and I'll definitely be taking it to heart!

[RollinLower]

18 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Not trying to sound like an Ass Hole. But I wouldn't trust anything off of Aliexpress. Just saying. Anything power related in a PC, Id only buy from a reputable company. 

You don't sound like an asshole to be honest. In the end you are right after all.

This pc ran fine for a year untill I put AE stuff in it. Keep thinking like this and you'll save yourself the drama I'm going through right now.

[Bitter]

19 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Not trying to sound like an Ass Hole. But I wouldn't trust anything off of Aliexpress. Just saying. Anything power related in a PC, Id only buy from a reputable company. 

What's scary is anyone can buy these in bulk with branding on them and sell them. Someone could put a ROG logo on those and sell them somewhere and someone might be duped into thinking it's an Asus product and therefore 'good'. I have a powered PWM fan hub that's got an Asus ROG logo on it, 100% not an Asus product. Will it burn my computer down, probably not. Someone a little less knowledgeable could easily think they're not buying junk, just buying something used or discounted from an eBay re-seller. 

[GreatnessRD]

I'm just thankful that you, your family, and neighbors are safe. Definitely a good to know and super glad that this is covered in your insurance. Now you can build a new monster.

 

When parts are a thing again

[Bitter]

Yeah good luck explaining to your insurance company that the same parts now cost 25-30% more than you paid for them...

[Dutchy735]

On 12/31/2020 at 4:50 AM, Donut417 said:

Not trying to sound like an Ass Hole. But I wouldn't trust anything off of Aliexpress. Just saying. Anything power related in a PC, Id only buy from a reputable company. 

Honestly I think that's really naive and gullible  to say such a thing. almost everything is made cheap in china these days and aliexpress is just a reseller like amazon or any other platform like it. the only reason why its so much cheaper is because china has some perks it can use to make transport extremely cheap, and you probably cut out one or two middlemans too. You can buy the same adapters on a different platform, but they're still made in the same factory in china.

[Donut417]

3 minutes ago, Dutchy735 said:

Honestly I think that's really naive and gullible  to say such a thing. almost everything is made cheap in china these days and aliexpress is just a reseller like amazon or any other platform like it. the only reason why its so much cheaper is because china has some perks it can use to make transport extremely cheap, and you probably cut out one or two middlemans too. You can buy the same adapters on a different platform, but they're still made in the same factory in china.

Reputable brands generally have quality standards. Unlike Aliepress and Wish. Thats why Linus has been having a hard time bringing stuff to LLT Store because they are worried about quality as well as worker safety/treatment. Thats the different. Aliexpress sells legit stuff, but they sell a lot of SHIT stuff as well. And considering these almost burned the OP home down, Id say its not naive or gullible. Me myself, I wouldn't have bought them.