A gamer shows a short video of how his graphics card gives up. The community speculates what might have gone wrong.
A user posted on reddit a nearly 10-second video. Here you can see how he starts his computer. Suddenly, his graphics card starts burning, but the scare is already over a moment later and there is only a lot of smoke left.
As he explains, this is already the second boot attempt and he has no desire for a third attempt after the action. By the way, the graphics card is an Asrock Phantom GXR RX570 8G OC.
An adapter is presumably to blame for the broken graphics card
How does the community react? Confused and partly amused. Some consider the whole act a fake for a bit of internet fame. Others believe it must be a short circuit:
It is likely a short circuit. This can happen if a capacitor is destroyed for a short time. It can also happen if you have punched the card and bent the soldered power connectors, causing the 12 V to be shorted with the ground.
What probably happened? At one point, the user mentions that he connected the 8-pin power connector of his graphics card to the power supply via 2 adapters. Already here there were “only sparks,” he then bought a stronger power supply (from 550W to 650W). With the new power supply, the graphics card caught fire.
What he probably didn’t notice: He combined two completely different power connectors (EPS and PCIe). A user also writes somewhat incredulously (via reddit.com):
Did you really try to convert an 8 pin EPS into an 8 pin PCIE? That’s an expensive mistake.
Why doesn’t that work? The two connector types do not fit together. Simply put: The EPS connector is designed to power a motherboard CPU socket, while the PCI Express connector is meant to power a GPU (via superuser.com). And under normal circumstances, you cannot plug an EPS connector into your graphics card because it simply does not fit there.
If you now try to combine these two connector types by using an adapter, it results in physical damage. Because you reverse the power supply to the device.
Always pay close attention to the cables and the corresponding connectors when assembling a gaming PC. While anyone can theoretically build a PC, some mistakes can still be very dangerous. Many power supply manufacturers also label the individual power cables (CPU, PCIe, SATA, and so on), making the assignment of the cables clear.
The user’s end result, a graphics card that says goodbye with fire and smoke, is not necessarily surprising. Such “experiments” with power cables happen again and again.
It likely happens more often that novices, who do not have enough power cables on hand, use some other cable, for example, via an adapter. And free SATA cables are sometimes used for the graphics card.
How dangerous such actions can be for your gaming PC was once thoroughly presented by a YouTuber:
YouTuber shows how you can ruin your gaming PC with a single cable
