Your favourite cursed/weird tech item on the internet?

[Bismut]

Hey everyone,

 

I have been on Ebay again and went down the rabbit hole of concerning tech (well, mostly adapters), which made me wonder what the most concerning/cursed items you have seen are?

 

This is my top find so far: a S-ATA to "PCIe 8Pin" adapter; S-ATA is rated for up to 4.5A per voltage (about 54W on the 12V rail), "PCIe 8Pin" for up to 7A per contact. Since each connector has three 12V contacts, the maximum power draw is 21A (about 252W), almost five times the rated maximum power of the single S-ATA connector. That adapter is a fire hazard.

 

Looking forward to hearing/seeing your finds.

[PowerPCFan]

5 minutes ago, Bismut said:

This is my top find so far: a S-ATA to "PCIe 8Pin" adapter; S-ATA is rated for up to 4.5A per voltage (about 54W on the 12V rail), "PCIe 8Pin" for up to 7A per contact. Since each connector has three 12V contacts, the maximum power draw is 21A (about 252W), almost five times the rated maximum power of the single S-ATA connector. That adapter is a fire hazard.

Only a fire hazard on cards with high power draw. Since cards draw 75w from the motherboard and SATA can provide 54w, theoretically that adapter would be safe for any GPU that has a TDP of about 130w or less. So it's not as cursed as you think, perfect for an Optiplex PC flip with an RX 570/580 or GTX 1660 Super. 

 

If you want a safer adapter that supports cards of higher wattages, you can get this adapter, it raises the maximum wattage to about 180w. You could technically put in an RX 6650 XT which can do 1440p. But I would advise against putting a 1440p GPU in an Optiplex because you'll overload the PSU and those old Intel i5 4th gen CPUs won't keep up with a mid-range card from 2021. 

[filpo]

It's always reddit 

[Bismut]

3 minutes ago, PowerPCFan said:

Only a fire hazard on cards with high power draw. Since cards draw 75w from the motherboard and SATA can provide 54w, theoretically that adapter would be safe for any GPU that has a TDP of about 130w or less. So it's not as cursed as you think, perfect for an Optiplex PC flip with an RX 570/580 or GTX 1660 Super. 

That is true, but you have to think about the worst case scenario. Someone will use an adapter like this with a riser that does not transmit power and burn their house down. I might have done that when I was younger and even dumber

 

5 minutes ago, filpo said:

It's always reddit 

That reminds me of the person "listening to the power grid" by plugging a USB-C to AUX adapter into a wall wart. You are likely not getting anything but static from that, if anything

[8tg]

That time nvidia didn’t tell the AIBs about the true thermal specs of the 1660’s until the last second so they had been prepping for 200w+ tdp cards, but when they got the real specs, evga and asus just sent it with over the top coolers on 120w cards

I also just really like any GPU like this. Where the idea is either absolute overkill, or they just put whatever big cooler they had lying around on any GPU.

Like I own a 560ti Kudan, though just the card, I don’t have the accessories. It came in a box packaged like a gun in custom cut foam, and aforementioned accessories I don’t have include attachable bonus heatsinks and a set of paints to custom paint your own card

This is a triple slot, triple fan 1gb 560ti with a vrm expansion card btw

 

[8tg]

Another example, maxsun had a 1050ti variant called the Big Mac which is a triple fan, optionally powered or 6 pin 1050ti

 

for if you for some reason wanted a 1050ti that fits in less things and makes more noise

[Bismut]

6 minutes ago, 8tg said:

That time nvidia didn’t tell the AIBs about the true thermal specs of the 1660’s until the last second so they had been prepping for 200w+ tdp cards, but when they got the real specs, evga and asus just sent it with over the top coolers on 120w cards

Short and chunky is a really weird combo to see, I do not like this card.

 

7 minutes ago, 8tg said:

Like I own a 560ti Kudan, though just the card, I don’t have the accessories. It came in a box packaged like a gun in custom cut foam, and aforementioned accessories I don’t have include attachable bonus heatsinks and a set of paints to custom paint your own card

This is a triple slot, triple fan 1gb 560ti with a vrm expansion card btw

Colourful is wild, that I have to admit. Did not even notice the card having a triple slot design, having that on a mid range card back in the 500 gen must have been insane. Not to mention the accessories, I want a card like that now

[Brian McKee]

1 hour ago, PowerPCFan said:

Only a fire hazard on cards with high power draw. Since cards draw 75w from the motherboard and SATA can provide 54w, theoretically that adapter would be safe for any GPU that has a TDP of about 130w or less. So it's not as cursed as you think, perfect for an Optiplex PC flip with an RX 570/580 or GTX 1660 Super. 

 

If you want a safer adapter that supports cards of higher wattages, you can get this adapter, it raises the maximum wattage to about 180w. You could technically put in an RX 6650 XT which can do 1440p. But I would advise against putting a 1440p GPU in an Optiplex because you'll overload the PSU and those old Intel i5 4th gen CPUs won't keep up with a mid-range card from 2021. 

Sure but people should really be using a larger Molex connection and not Sata for an ad hock PCIE connection. Molex is rated up to 8.5 amps per wire.

[Bismut]

3 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

Sure but people should really be using a larger Molex connection and not Sata for an ad hock PCIE connection. Molex is rated up to 8.5 amps per wire.

I always thought that the current limit for "Molex" was "whatever does not change the colour of its casing"
8,5A still is way less than 21A though, although you would be pretty okay with a 2x "Molex" to "8Pin" adapter because of tolerances.

[Brian McKee]

13 minutes ago, Bismut said:

8,5A still is way less than 21A though, although you would be pretty okay with a 2x "Molex" to "8Pin" adapter because of tolerances.

That's usually the standard yes. I wouldn't run a single Molex to 8 pin for anything that requires actual powerdraw.

[Bismut]

5 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

That's usually the standard yes. I wouldn't run a single Molex to 8 pin for anything that requires actual powerdraw.

Hey, it would be better than a single S-ATA power plug.

[Thaldor]

Favorite?

 

Spoiler

The "Meet The God" -cables. XLR to 3-pin single-phase plug and DMX to 5-pin 3-phase plug. These are just someone made for the joke, hopefully.

 

But for real products, the 3.5mm TRS to dual-XLR adapters. They're fine if you really know what you're doing but once you connect your phone to the +48V mic port for AUX input, oh boy, are you going to have "fun" time.

 

[Bismut]

16 hours ago, Thaldor said:

That is cursed, I literally only know those plugs from connections for welders and such.

 

16 hours ago, Thaldor said:

I got basically that exact cable with my microphone, a BM-800. Great microphone, and I only paid like 20€ for the entire kit.

[da na]

ExpressCard 34 adapter for external graphics card. ExpressCard is just PCIe after all...

 

[Needfuldoer]

21 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Favorite?

 

  Hide contents

The "Meet The God" -cables. XLR to 3-pin single-phase plug and DMX to 5-pin 3-phase plug. These are just someone made for the joke, hopefully.

 

 

But for real products, the 3.5mm TRS to dual-XLR adapters. They're fine if you really know what you're doing but once you connect your phone to the +48V mic port for AUX input, oh boy, are you going to have "fun" time.

That's nothing. See if you can figure out why this exists.

 

 

This is the most cursed misuse of electronics connectors I'm aware of.

[8tg]

The Lenovo Y510p, it used a different ultrabay (Lenovo/ibm expansion bay standard) option so you could add a second GT750m for GT750m SLI.

 

 

People reverse engineered the connection standard used, as it was basically just a pcie x8 slot in a different form factor, and made their own adapters for what is kinda egpu and also technically not egpu 

that is an R9 nano plugged into a laptop with a haswell mobile i7 and a now tertiary gt 750m

[8tg]

Also while on the topic of modding Lenovo stuff, any of the modded classic thinkpads.

Just read this https://www.xyte.ch/mods/x210-x2100/

 

So the thinkpad X200/201 are compact machines from 2008-2010. People really like them for their form factor, hardware features and the overall vibe.

People don’t like them for the late core2duos or first gen mobile i5’s with 1200x800 displays.

So with custom designed motherboards they can now have

-8th gen i7 quad cores or 10th gen i7 hex cores

-up to 64gb of ddr4

-multiple nvme ssds

-usb type c right alongside usb 2.0 ports

-1920x1200 displays or 3000x2000 glossy IPs panels

 

 

This is in essence a 15 year old laptop with mostly modern specs.

This is also why I don’t like the framework laptop, because people have already been doing this to all kinds of thinkpads. But that’s a whole other debate.

[Yone]

This topic reminds me of this old article about "killer" adapters: http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

 

But they were deliberately made to be destructive and dangerous.

[Thaldor]

18 hours ago, Bismut said:

That is cursed, I literally only know those plugs from connections for welders and such.

 

I got basically that exact cable with my microphone, a BM-800. Great microphone, and I only paid like 20€ for the entire kit.

Both big ones are high-power connectors (3-pin 1-phase 200-240V 16/20A AC, 5-pin 3-phase 300-480V 16/20A AC) and the XLR is often audio connector and DMX512 (or XLR5) is often used in stage lighting, only thing that is similar with them is the amount of pins. You can guess what would happen to the vocalist if instead of the +48V DC Phantom power the mic received 240V AC, that's pretty much same as your phone getting the +48V Phantom power instead of some leak power (milli/micro volts) through the combo-jack.

13 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

That's nothing. See if you can figure out why this exists.

 

 

This is the most cursed misuse of electronics connectors I'm aware of.

My best guesses are either that's some Cannon connector made into a grounding bar or used as system to not loose your important poking thing, that someone might even mistake for a key.

 

Also to get your daily dose of cursed tech, just head to r/spicypillows, not that the tech is cursed but there's some really cursed pictures right there.

[Mark Kaine]

Without a doubt, this IDE XT hard-drive.

 

 

 

 

The sound is better than any C64! 

 

 

[Needfuldoer]

45 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Without a doubt, this IDE XT hard-drive.

[snip]

The sound is better than any C64! 

Mmm... Stepper motor drives.

 

Do Mac 800k floppy drives count as cursed? Every single one needs to be taken apart and greased, and most of them have a broken gear in the eject motor. They're not compatible with 720k DOS disks or drives, even though they used the same DSDD 3.5" floppies.

 

Those seek noises though...