New Power Supply fried my HDDs?

Sorin

Sorin

Sorin

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Joined
14 Jun 2021
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Location
Derby UK
Hi guys,

I couple of months ago I purchased a new power supply in preparation for a GPU upgrade (which obviously hasn't happened yet because you literally can't buy any cards but this is a different story).

The power supply I purchased is Corsair RM850x 80 PLUS Gold, I was replacing a semi-modular power supply which I had for a few years now.

The problem I had is that immediately after replacing it, I turned on the computer and both my HDDs got fried instantly, smoke started coming out of them, opened everything back up and took them out, the chipboard on their back was fried (see photo -> https://ibb.co/B67ynJp ). I also had 2 SSDs in the PC at the same time but these were absolutely fine.

I don't know what to believe here? The HDDs where connected to power through a 4-Pin Molex SATA Cable, the same cable was used before switching to the new power supply. one of the HDDs was no more than one year old..

I haven't purchased any replacement HDDs at this point as I am still a bit confused about what happened...I thought to wait a bit in case the new power supply turns out to be bad but I haven't had any other issues with it.

Does anyone have any idea what happened here?

Thanks
 
Yeah, I used the same cable :( that is the only explanation I was going towards....especially that everything else was absolutely fine..

Is it like a general thing, not to use cables from one PSU to another? or are you suggesting that particular cable could have been dodgy?
 
Very unlucky there but good it didn't fry other components. As mentioned, was that 4-pin Molex SATA cable a custom Molex to SATA cable to reduce the wires or is it the PSU cable from a previous PSU?

Sorin said:
Yeah, I used the same cable :( that is the only explanation I was going towards....especially that everything else was absolutely fine..

Is it like a general thing, not to use cables from one PSU to another? or are you suggesting that particular cable could have been dodgy?
Click to expand...

Just saw this, yeah there's no standards for PSU modular cables. Linus Tech Tips did a video on this recently.

Basically the voltages on the end of the cable would match other PSUs, but the cable bit you plug into the PSU wouldn't match so it would have sent the wrong voltages down causing the damage.

Annoying really.
 
thanks guys. yeah, good thing I didn't fry anything else, probably the HDDs were the cheapest thing in the build. lesson learnt I guess. I am hopping that the Molex was the issue but I guess no way of knowing unless I get another HDD.

So..I will get a new HDD soon then and plug it in without using no Molex, I will just use the standard sata power cable that goes straight from the PSU.
 
When I installed my new PSU it didn’t even occur to me to plug the old cables into the new PSU. If you’ve got a couple of modular supplies best make sure not to mix up the cables.

Edit: Just checked my PSU box, I’ve got six cables I’m not using and it came with eight. The two I’m using are one of the three SATA power cables and one of the two Molex power cables.
 
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The cable itself wasn't the issue. This happened because pinouts on PSU's can massively vary across the many OEM's that build them. This is why you should always use the cables that came with the PSU and not use the cables from others. All it takes is one pin in the wrong place and things can fry. Just think yourself lucky it wasn't the GPU or CPU and Motherboard.
 
Thanks all. I am glad that the overall sentiment is that I shouldn't use old cables, luckily is not something worse. Happy that everyone seems to point to that being the issue so as I said, lesson learnt and yeah.. I got off easy :)
 
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