Melted pwm cable. Please help!

Joe P · 26 Feb 2017 at 17:48

Hi everyone, just finished a build with a friend. Components including:
Asus maximus hero 9
i7 7700k
Asus 1080
Nzxt kraken
Phanteks enthoo evolve tg

On completion when we first pressed the power button it began to boot with a puff of smoke from the top of the case. The smoke has came from a melted cable. The cable from the fan splitter on the rear of the case to the cpu_fan header on the mobo.

I have exactly the same build only I use a corsair h115i instead of the kraken. Both builds are all wired in the same.

Could anybody please offer any advice at all as we're stuck and stressing out a lot.

Should we retry using the same cable from my rig? Or are we just going to get the same result? I don't mind having to buy a new cable but don't want to risk any if not further damage.

Thanks,

Joe

Hotwired · 26 Feb 2017 at 18:24

Cable is part of the case isn't it?

Should be Phanteks issue unless they come with with a different view.

crazypete00 · 26 Feb 2017 at 18:42

any pictures of the cable. very rare for a fan cable to smoke and melt. only way i can think it would melt is if it was pulling crazy amps down the tiny cables.

Joe P · 26 Feb 2017 at 21:13

Hi guys, thanks for the replies.

We've narrowed it down to the pwm hub. There is a melted component (a transistor I think) a small black rectangle with 2 legs one side and 1 leg on the other.

We've managed to disconnect the pwm hub completely and bypass the cpu_fan header. The computer has windows 10 running with all basic programs installed.

Still unknown is whether the cpu_fan header on the mb has taken damage or if it was the mb that caused the damage.

At present we are unwilling to try using my pwm hub and cable.

Our main question at present is, what is the most likely cause of the damage and is it safe to try using the cpu_fan header on the mb?

I'll post a pic if I can figure out how..

Thanks again.