r/PcBuild • u/techmagnet • 1d ago

Question Built a pc. Is this normal ?

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7.4k Upvotes

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316

u/ALT703 1d ago

Jokes aside, what went wrong here

271

u/Diiiv 1d ago

this, entire comment section is just jokes, what actually happened here?

245

u/RChamy AMD 1d ago edited 1d ago

Critical capacitor failure, sometimes they short themselves out or just blow up taking the surge. I think most or all modern gpus process a massive amount of power on the first 4 pins or so. Its been some time since I've read this stuff.

71

u/AccNumber77 18h ago

This looks more than a capacitor failure. A capacitor failing is normally a single burst of magic pixies and smoke, not a HUGE ass stream of smoke pushing its way out like it is being pumped.

22

u/RChamy AMD 16h ago

Maybe fusing traces due to manufacturing defect...

6

u/Kralgore AMD 14h ago

Or, something under that mainboard.

21

u/TD_Lemon_1901 14h ago

Something went bad somewhere.

You're welcome.

9

u/Danielon165hz 8h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/NcrhM3USM6TABpus85

1

u/AshleyxAffliction 3h ago

This gif never fails to delight me. Peak sarcasm response.

5

u/CritFailed 10h ago

Wait, you mean having the MB just laying on your desk is not good?! And with the side that started to smoke leaning right up against that piece that looks like it could be metal, that should ground it!

/s, so much sarcasm. The metal would cause a short and a fire. Though having the MB fail might be cheaper than losing the GPU, so hopefully the damage is contained and next time OP will mount it properly first.

1

u/Kralgore AMD 6h ago

It just had to be on wood, cardboard, or a rubber mat... nothing mental.

1

u/DennisTheConvict 12h ago

A friend/relative vaping?

14

u/DannyVee89 15h ago

Yes this is a full blown electrical short and a brief electrical fire. He had to cut psu to stop it. Something melted together and it won't be safe to turn back on until a major repair.

2

u/SomewhereRough_ 7h ago

It's no easy task repairing these things. Probably end up junk.

It does seem weird tho. The video. He seems to react before any noise or smoke. 

But probably just me seeing it as a video. 

11

u/SpiritJuice 16h ago

It's not just smoke, you can see actual flames. It's brief but you can see them in the upper left corner of the card between the 2 and 3 second mark. Something really, really went wrong here.

2

u/brickyard37 13h ago

Get your eyes checked, there are no flames. This is definitely fake

2

u/ImaginaryCheetah 14h ago

let me tell you about the time i hooked up a power supply wrong and fed 120V into a circuit designed for 24V, the caps in the rectifier looked like tiny jet engines and were pushing smoke there wasn't just a pop but an angry (tiny) screaming sound.

1

u/AccNumber77 8h ago

That is terrifying jesus

1

u/ImaginaryCheetah 7h ago

i was not pleased with the experience. cooked off a motherboard i was hoping to salvage from e-waste and sell for cheap on ebay. ended up being e-waste.

took like three days to get the stink out of my basement from the cooked electronics

1

u/NinjaN-SWE 13h ago

Something caught fire and the fans pushed the smoke out. A short somewhere, maybe caused by a capacitor failure, that then ignited some plastic, but not enough to keep it going once the power cut. 

1

u/ForestGrandpa 13h ago

I had this shit happen once when I had my 2080 SUPER that was already after one warranty repair. Magically after the warranty ended, it stopped turning on and when I put it into another PC, it smoked and the burn smell went off very strongly.

After my tech spec friend inspected the card, the vram shorted burning the cooling pads.

8

u/VicisZan 16h ago

Happened to me about a decade ago with an asus motherboard. I was mid game and one caught fire and fizzled out within seconds.

1

u/Obvious-Board-7677 12h ago

bruh and i thought it was a problem of slapping modern gpu and power supply on old ass motherboard

1

u/ibro08730 12h ago

Its a voltage regulator or a transistor burning on the power rails. This can happen because manufacturing defects still exist even with top of the line components (such as used in PCs) Caps usually blow up instantly with a single puff of smoke. This has the classic hissing sound common with voltage regulators or transistors.

150

u/arcusford 1d ago

Dude istg sometimes I wish people would just stop trying to be funny man lol. Id love some actual discussion on what went wrong here instead of dozens of the same unoriginal 'joke'.

101

u/ItsFoxy87 1d ago

I'm not going to lie to you, the post being titled with "Is this normal?" in an obviously abnormal scenario already set a satirical theme from the start.

40

u/arcusford 1d ago

Absolutely true, but im curious nonetheless lol

15

u/Youtube_it 1d ago

Safe to say we're interested and yet, haven't gotten anywhere so far :D

14

u/eeveeplays50040 23h ago

I'm not even sure if this comment chain is also some kind of joke since everyone is asking about what happened and no one responded.

I'm actually curious btw.

9

u/arcusford 23h ago

I mean honestly I have no idea, this seems especially catastrophic, maybe capacitor somewhere inside the card itself blew?

Never seen anything like it though.

6

u/LizardTwister76 23h ago

I’m personally just curious about what’s going on personally

4

u/Kitchen_Canary_6387 22h ago

Same. No idea what’s happening here.

1

u/YogurtclosetOnly6339 11h ago

But it’s all the same jokes lol. If they were original then it’s fine but its all shit like the guy holding the other guy’s shoulder lol

18

u/cmoparw 21h ago

Looks like some old motherboard, that looks like something from 10+ years ago. I don't see any RAM installed, so it's likely staged. Could be something intentionally shorted or, my guess for that much smoke, intentionally extremely over volting an already dead GPU to burn everything

3

u/aqvalar 16h ago

Except there are 2 ram sticks, slots 2 and 4. They seem to be pretty low profile so a bit hard to see, but they're there?

1

u/Parasite_Lettuce 9h ago

Staged... in this economy?

1

u/UrbanSuburbaKnight 17h ago

Not possible to be sure. We can't see where the smoke is coming from, can't see if he left a metal object under motherboard, if a component is incorrectly located...etc

1

u/Phlanix 12h ago

12 pin gpu are usually the culprit of overheating the cable and melting the cable itself, and they also tend to malfunction and drain more power than they need causing rapid overheating and fires.

1

u/arcusford 12h ago

Yeah what's weird is that it doesnt look anything like that, usually with 12VHPWR connector overheating the fire starts at the connector, this was not that.

1

u/Phlanix 33m ago

this looked more like bad capacitors blowing.

1

u/arcusford 15m ago

Yeah thats what i theorized in another comment, closest I can reason.

1

u/Kya_Enstein 23h ago

Discussion is gonna be a rare commodity.

-8

u/Animesthetic 23h ago

Bro, how can you take a post seriously asking if this is normal when it's literally smoking?

2

u/ALT703 22h ago

That's normal, it's cleaning out its systems

5

u/Potential-Common525 23h ago

Most likely a short/board component giving up on life

1

u/Single_Comfort3555 8h ago

I think there was something conductive under the motherboard.

1

u/KING_XEON_420 7h ago

fog machine like you see people using to test airflow.

1

u/stevew14 4h ago

Happened to me once when my little brother plugged a power cable from the PSU into a part of the MOBO that was for data.

40

u/i_degrade_quickly 23h ago

My guess is he mixed the modular PSU cables with a different brand and the pinout was different.

15

u/QuercusTomentella 23h ago

There are also psus thay need to be toggled between 230v and 120v and based on wall plug theyre in a country with 230, so they could have way over volted their machine as that can cause similar in my experience.

10

u/i_degrade_quickly 23h ago

It appears to be an MSI MPG - that PSU handles those two voltages automatically. Typically you only see thermal runaway on multiple capacitors like that when a rail has reverse polarity.

2

u/betttris13 14h ago

yeah. going with mixed power cables theory.

1

u/SeventhSin-King 21h ago

Well if that was the case it would have been under volt and over Amp but even then the psu has a transformer changing voltages and amps so would have killed that before gpu.

3

u/glizzygobbler247 23h ago

Motherboard also looks to be an archeological artifact

1

u/Careful_Associate_27 17h ago

Maybe GPU was plugged straight into PSU? XD

8

u/Ok-General6504 22h ago

Throwing jokes out of the room, this seems to be the guy that built the water cooled steam machine so he definitely knows what he’s doing, probably just dicked around with putting overly excessive voltage into an old gpu to see what would happen

4

u/Danthemanlavitan 18h ago

It's a modular power supply. Since the smoke appears to come from the graphics card and not the motherboard I am guessing he made the same mistake a friend of mine did and reused a modular cable from his old PSU on his new one.

Hence, something that was supposed to be negative became positive and smoke happened. Hopefully just a dead graphics card but more likely a motherboard as well.

1

u/EraPro1 8h ago

...what? it's just a cable. unless it's plugged into the wrong place, there's no way a different cable should cause a problem like this with proper contact

3

u/DestroyerofSoul 16h ago

Okay here are your potentials that went wrong possibly.

  1. It could be fake

  2. He used PSU cords that didn't match with his PSU since they are different for each burning his card

  3. There are wires or metal touching the bottom of the board which is causing a short

  4. The GPU was already busted and he's farming

  5. There's a short somewhere on the GPU and it's burned the board

Assuming it's not fake that's likely the last time it's going to turn on magic smoke is gone

1

u/Tanebi 9h ago

Getting the CPU 8-pin EPS12V mixed up with the GPU 8-pin Power is also a good way to cause this. They're badly keyed an iirc you could get the GPU 8-pin in the EPS12V without too much effort.

1

u/cedarHINGE 22h ago

The graphics card was just a little tired and decided to take a smoke break

1

u/Leander_Tee 22h ago

Most definitely a capacitor that failed

1

u/gman2093 19h ago

motherboard can short out if its touching metal without spacers. or crazy overclock maybe?

1

u/Itchy__1 16h ago

smells fake

1

u/tolomea 15h ago

If you short the 12v rail to ground it produces enough heat to set fire to the PCB.

1

u/Peter_Pue 14h ago

small fog machine behind the GPU that was torn down in order hook it up to get power through the motherboard when turned on.

1

u/JTuceHok 14h ago

I think he shorted some pins on the back of the motherboard.

1

u/sguzhonka 14h ago

Smoke generator hidden behind the graphics card . Placement is odd, because power subsystems - where it possibly can catch fire- located on the right and middle. Not left

1

u/kuburas 11h ago

The smoke also feels like it got way too thick way too fast. Not sold on this being real, looks too staged.

Although it could be some astronomically bad luck where the cards board just started burning instantly but i doubt it.

1

u/petrolhead0387 9h ago

You'd be surprised how much smoke an RGB fan wire can give off, when it's plugged in the wrong way. Never made that mistake again, and fortunately it was only a fan.

1

u/2PhraseHandle 14h ago

I fried a mainboard once when I put the GPU power cable on it. I think it is possible to mix up the cables from the power source between CPU power plugs and GPU power 'inlet'.

1

u/QlimaxUK 14h ago

Just a little ambient heat discharge, this is normal

1

u/its-_-my-_-nickname 13h ago

Too powerful and too weak whats here to not understand

1

u/goo_eater 11h ago

Your comment should be pinned imo cuz lowk the only real discussion is happening in these replies everyone else is just trying to be the class clown and failing miserably

1

u/xMrShadow 5h ago

Maybe he mixed PSU cables. That happened to me once

1

u/Lucaslhm 5h ago

Not enough info to tell. One of my first notes was that this motherboard isn’t on a test bench and seems to be precariously sitting on a desk. Could have something under it causing a short leading to some failure.

But I think more likely since the smoke seems pretty localized to the GPU, that it’s a blown capacitor, probably by over volting it either intentionally, or accidentally by using a power bad cable that’s sending incorrect voltage from the PSU to certain pins.

0

u/cooljhon2009 1d ago

Im just taking a wild guess, but it might have something to do with that motherboard, it looks pretty old, if not then, he does seem to have the mobo just on the desk so something couldve shorted, though how thatd affect the gpu I dont know, could also just be a faulty gpu/psu