New Power Supply fried my HDDs?

[Sorin]

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

 

[Sorin]

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?

 

[Sorin]

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.

 

[Sorin]

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