Mining accidents having caused physical damage (overheating hw, fires, etc)

[mrb]

Let's collect, in this thread, anecdotes about mining accidents having caused physical damage such as: high temperatures destroying hardware, insulation melting on power cords, fires (gasp!), etc.

I'll start with one from a friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous): he lives in a place with old 120V electrical wiring. He put a rig of ~1.6kW (~13A), as measured by a kill-a-watt, on a 20A circuit for about half a day, until he started smelling smoke in his apartment, apparently coming from the wiring inside the walls. He completely stopped using this circuit, and now runs his rig on a dedicated 240V circuit. A 20A circuit is normally rated 16A for continuous loads by the National Electric Code, but that old wiring was likely defective and the insulation probably started melting.

Another from me: a fan failed on one of my HD 5970s. My monitoring data showed that the fan speed dropped to 0 percent for some reason, causing the temperature of one of the GPUs to quickly spike to 105 C for about half an hour, while the other GPU remained at a relatively safer 90 C. My miner then hung, causing the temperatures to drop back to normal idle levels. This has destroyed one of the GPUs on this card. Since then, any attempt to launch a GPGPU app quickly triggers an ASIC hang. The fan on this card still works, so perhaps it was a firmware bug controlling the fan that stopped it.

[1715044535]

1715044535

[1715044535]

1715044535

[1715044535]

1715044535

[1715044535]

1715044535

[1715044535]

1715044535

[PabloW]

Im afraid of reading this thread and become paranoic

[rezin777]

When installing new hardware in "modified" cases I have repeatedly cut myself on sharp metal edges. Oh, and quite a few times I've touched spinning fans, which causes some damage as well.

[foggyb]

I broke a nail assembling my miner hardware.

[Jaime Frontero]

i've gotten a couple of fingertip owies from unshrouded fans, and a knuckle cut from the sharp edge of an internal drive cage.

i also lost a shirt cuff button when i inadvertently closed a case on it.  i liked that button, dammit.

[zale]

I have my fingers in fans all day erry day, nothing happened until now though, but it's always a shock.

[KnuttyD]

I lost a finger nail from a 5400 RMP Gentle Typhoon liquid cooling fan  
Also, I had a small fire start in one of the sockets that the miner was plugged into. Luckly, it was at night, so I was home and caught it in time.

[dikidera]

This does not necessarily mean it's caused by mining directly, but more or less, indirectly. I overclocked too much to gain faster mhash/s and rendered the card useless under extreme load. It will shutdown if i were to try and bench it with a stressing program.
This is why i set -f on poclbm to a big higher so that it's not fully stressed.

[Maxxx]

Also, I had a small fire start in one of the sockets that the miner was plugged into. Luckly, it was at night, so I was home and caught it in time.

Jesus. if I wasn't paranoid enough already.

[SgtSpike]

Haha, good thread.

I was trying to figure out why one of my 5830's said fan speed was at 100%, but the temps were 90-95c and RPMs was just -.  I thought the sensor was broken for RPMs.  A little more investigation revealed that the card was being severely throttled (down from 800 to 600 or 300mhz).  I stuck my fingers into the fan, because it was too close to the bottom of the case to see if it was actually spinning or not, and to my dismay, nothing.  It was also almost impossible to turn.

Turns out, the PCIe extension cable I was using for my 3rd 5830 in the case was caught in the fan of the 2nd 5830 in the slot right above it.  I took a screwdriver to it while it was still plugged in and managed to bend it out of the way of the cards.  All cards are working well now. 

[inh]

Glad i'm not the only one that likes to stick his fingers in fans.

[zapeta]

I was working on finding the optimal cooling solution for my miner and so I reached in to the case to unplug a case fan while the computer was running.  All of a sudden I see a huge spark and the comp shuts down.  Of course, I'm crapping my pants at this point but after unplugging the machine and plugging it back in everything came right back with no problem.  No idea what happened but thankfully no physical damage.  At that point I decided that my cooling was ok and no need to mess with it further.

[MiningBuddy]

Worst I've had so far is I stood on a plug facing this way up when building my new rig the other day. 


Just hoping my house electrics aren't going to catch fire now while I'm away  

[foggyb]

Fires! Yikes! 

Please install dedicated circuits for your miner rigs!

This is what u need:
12AGW insulated three-strand wire
20A circuit breaker
20A receptacle

Also keep in mind that most power bars are only rated for 15A (continuous load needs to be 20% less than max load!).

I had a decent Belkin power bar attached and it tripped after a few minutes with three mining rigs connected. The 20A circuit breaker did not trip, as it was well within spec drawing around 1800 watts @ 120 volts, or 15 amps.

With a properly installed 20A circuit, the continuous current draw can be 1900 watts @ 120 volts (or 1750 watts @ 110 volts).

A Kill-A-Watt meter is a very handy tool, it is so cheap there is no excuse not to have one!

[m4rkiz]

When installing new hardware in "modified" cases I have repeatedly cut myself on sharp metal edges. Oh, and quite a few times I've touched spinning fans, which causes some damage as well.

exactly my experience

and once i hold finger on my fully working 5970 for too long

[Genrobo]

My mining rigs have kicked the breaker in my house once, but beyond that I don't have any scary mining stories.

Hardware stories though?
Once I was replacing the thermal paste on my CPU, I got some thermal paste on my hand and didn't wash it off. (That's a BIG mistake depending on what type of thermal paste...)

I now have a permanent chemical burn on my hand from CPU thermal paste...
Any skin I have that grows over the burn dies at a very accelerated rate, it looks like psoriasis.

[grue]

My mining rigs have kicked the breaker in my house once, but beyond that I don't have any scary mining stories.

Hardware stories though?
Once I was replacing the thermal paste on my CPU, I got some thermal paste on my hand and didn't wash it off. (That's a BIG mistake depending on what type of thermal paste...)

I now have a permanent chemical burn on my hand from CPU thermal paste...
Any skin I have that grows over the burn dies at a very accelerated rate, it looks like psoriasis.

did you go to the doctor for that?

[rezin777]

I now have a permanent chemical burn on my hand from CPU thermal paste...
Any skin I have that grows over the burn dies at a very accelerated rate, it looks like psoriasis.

Good lord! Cut it off man, before it spreads! 

[lacedwithkerosene]

www.bitcoinminingaccidents.com

[grue]

Who here would be willing to be interviewed for articles on my site, www.bitcoinminingaccidents.com ?

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.