Corsair AX860 PSU Dead

JimboTheGiant · 27 Dec 2013 at 16:45

Woke up a few days ago to the distinct smell of a blown PSU. PC was dead and wouldn't boot at all. Upon removing the PSU, here's what I found:

As you can see the wires had melted at the modular connector on the PSU, so much so that I couldn't remove the connector, instead it pulled the connector socket from the PSU pins themselves!

This happened in the middle of the night, so I was quite lucky a small fire hadn't started!

I was running a 3570K at stock and a mildly overclocked HD7990 all watercooled. PSU should be plenty powerful enough.

It was bought from an online retailer in October so will definitely be getting RMA'd.

Jim

JimboTheGiant · 27 Dec 2013 at 16:47

This was the 6+2 pin PCI-E cable connected to my 7990 graphics cards, so i'm assuming that the single modular cable to 2x8pin connectors simply couldn't handle the current that my card was drawing

JimboTheGiant · 27 Dec 2013 at 17:10

I'm guessing that's what has happened but I won't know for sure until my new PSU arrives tomorrow. Hopefully it didn't take any other hardware with it, especially my graphics card!

I think from here on out I'll be using 2 separate PSU modular cables for each of the 8 pin connectors on the graphics card (rather than 2 from the same lead)

JimboTheGiant · 27 Dec 2013 at 20:36

budwozza said:
Ouch - I have a AX860 - Had it about 3 months as it was an RMA replacement for a HX850 that went pop. Are you sending it back to the retailer or to Corsair direct?

I've contacted Corsair, but I imagine they'll advise me to RMA it with the retailer. It was bought 17/10/13 so don't know if I can still RMA it with the retailer.

JimboTheGiant · 28 Dec 2013 at 10:11

Well some good news, my new superflower PSU arrived this morning from OCUK, and so far it looks all my other hardware is working fine.

I've been assigned an RMA number from Corsair so will look at getting it posted back. An upgrade would be nice in return for the inconvenience

JimboTheGiant · 28 Dec 2013 at 15:02

Thanks for that Nelly.

I thought that might be the cause. I simply assumed the provided cable would be sufficient. Corsair should never have provided cables with 2 connectors with graphics cards like the 7990 on the market.

Will let you know how the RMA goes.

Jim

JimboTheGiant · 28 Dec 2013 at 15:32

Until now I had no idea either. I've always had Corsair PSU's and never had a problem before. I have another AX860 powering a dual R9 280x rig but they draw a lot less power per card than the 7990!