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

[stickystyle]

One of the power MOSFET's shot a sizable flame out the back of my 5770 no more than 3 minutes after getting my very first rig together (talk about a bad omen eh?).  Luckily there I was still able to figure out the part number by looking at other transistors and pics on the internet and soldered a new one in place with what was probably my single worse soldering job in my life.

[SgtSpike]

Thank you EU for our 230 V power.

Hey US, enjoy your doubled current drain at your wall socket 

*shrug*

6 one way, a half dozen the other.

[dayfall]

Gigabyte's 5870s have very sharp fan blades that barely have a housing.  It is a good deterrent to sticking one's hand in a running machine.  Ouch!

[tsvekric]

nobody has posted this yet?

[Swishercutter]

So far just a pretty serious papercut from a 5830 box...seriously, it was very deep, like a knife cut.

[lacedwithkerosene]

Just almost set my entire mining rig room on fire... With shitty PSUs apparantly.

I hooked up 2*850W raidmax gold PSUs to 6 video cards and it started smoking like crazy.

I can hook up 6 * video cards to a 1200 watt gold psu with no problems whatsoever.

WTF raidmax?!? You made me inhale some kind of weird assed fumes!

Damn dude, I'm gonna have to feature you on my site again!

[Jack of Diamonds]

Broke my wrist last month in datacenter after hitting concrete wall; Multiple machines in the farm kept going offline due to ethernet failures or GPU freezes. The thing is, this was happening continuously at 2-5 AM for many days and I kept waking up on automatic text message alarm.

There is no personnel at night besides guard at the lobby and access is purely on keycard basis, so I have to drive 6 kilometers every time.

I'm usually very professional but that broke the camels back (yes, I realize it does not solve anything and is primitive. I was tired). Fortunately the problems went away after installing dedicated ethernet cards as suggested by sysadmin the following day.

[lacedwithkerosene]

nobody has posted this yet?

I've covered that at this link. I would like to get in touch with that poster for an interview, if they can step forward.

[Adam]

I think I have a problem in the making.  My circuit breaker would occasionally start buzzing, but it never actually tripped.  I have been counting on the assumption that the circuit breaker will trip if I have too much plugged in so I thought it wasn't dangerous.  But just adding up the wattages on everything that's plugged in gets me to like 2kW when it's all on a 15A breaker, so I'm sure I'm overloading it at least a little. 

The buzzing isn't constant or anything, and I will eventually move some of the equipment once everything has been built, but should I be worried at the moment?

[SgtSpike]

I think I have a problem in the making.  My circuit breaker would occasionally start buzzing, but it never actually tripped.  I have been counting on the assumption that the circuit breaker will trip if I have too much plugged in so I thought it wasn't dangerous.  But just adding up the wattages on everything that's plugged in gets me to like 2kW when it's all on a 15A breaker, so I'm sure I'm overloading it at least a little. 

The buzzing isn't constant or anything, and I will eventually move some of the equipment once everything has been built, but should I be worried at the moment?

Yes.  You should never load a circuit with more than 80% continuous load.  The wiring isn't built to carry that much load, and could be overheating and on the way to starting a fire.

That said, you should verify the ACTUAL power draw of each of your rigs before coming to conclusions.  For instance, a GTX295 "requires" a 680w PSU minimum, but the actual draw from the wall of a full-fledged system under load running a GTX295 is only 487w, according to tomshardware.com.

[Goldenmaw]

Damn.  I very nearly went Raidmax for a dual PSU setup.  I may have been saved from calamity by misleading advertising - I exchanged them upon noticing that it wasn't really a modular cable system. 

Oh, and I voice my support for Kill-O-Watts.  Cheap and incredibly useful in helping me obey the golden rule of 1 rig per circuit.

[ataranlen]

So this week I've added two mining rigs to my setup for a total of 8 6950's and a 5870x2 (roughly 3ghash/s) They have been mining for about 24hrs straight when my wife called me over by the couch in the living room. "Honey, this plug is warm... Is that from the heat in the other room" Yes honey, its from the heat... no, its just a wall fire waiting to happen! So until an electrician can get out here tomorrow, I'll be shutting down at least one of my rigs

Those kill-a-watts beep when you get em close to their max amps!

[anodyne]

I just happened to stick my beard into a fan while leaning over a caseless setup. No big damage, lost a few strands, but still...

[mrb]

Mechanical failure of a PSU fan blade, on a Corsair AX1200, after barely 700h of operation. Aah, the joy of running a mining cluster large enough to make improbable failures actually occur once in a while... After the blade broke, the imbalanced fan was making the whole computer chassis vibrate quite hard.

[tito13kfm]

I used a damaged dremel wheel to attempt to modify my x1 extender, it shattered as soon as I revved it up and a piece hit my face causing a small cut.

I was out of wheels so I grabbed my super sharp knife and started to shave away... slipped and cut my thumb open.

Neither cut was deep enough to warrant stitches, but there is a nice little pool of blood on my workbench now.

The good news is that I got the little fucker whittled down enough to make it work, and was able to add another 300MHash/sec to my secondary rig.

[Swishercutter]

I used a damaged dremel wheel to attempt to modify my x1 extender, it shattered as soon as I revved it up and a piece hit my face causing a small cut.

I was out of wheels so I grabbed my super sharp knife and started to shave away... slipped and cut my thumb open.

Neither cut was deep enough to warrant stitches, but there is a nice little pool of blood on my workbench now.

The good news is that I got the little fucker whittled down enough to make it work, and was able to add another 300MHash/sec to my secondary rig.

 

Worth it then.

[tito13kfm]

I used a damaged dremel wheel to attempt to modify my x1 extender, it shattered as soon as I revved it up and a piece hit my face causing a small cut.

I was out of wheels so I grabbed my super sharp knife and started to shave away... slipped and cut my thumb open.

Neither cut was deep enough to warrant stitches, but there is a nice little pool of blood on my workbench now.

The good news is that I got the little fucker whittled down enough to make it work, and was able to add another 300MHash/sec to my secondary rig.

Any chance of a pic? BMA's never shown an actual injury (including blood) before.

Nah, no pics, wiped it up shortly after it happened.  What remains can't really be identified as blood, more like a discoloration.

As far as the cuts, the thumb one was the worst but it's been 2 days and it's hard to see much of anything in a picture.  The face one was basically like when you cut yourself shaving, just a little nick.

I can offer up a picture of another injury that occurred while working on an old motherboard I was trying to get in mining shape.  I was going to desolder a bad cap and replace it... This injury is about 2 weeks old.. it was MUCH worse than it looks.

https://i.imgur.com/5bbhv.jpg

I am quite accident prone around computers.. I dropped a 850W PSU on my big toe last year.. The nail just recently grew back properly.  I could probably write a book of stupid computer related injuries.  I think the most frightening was when I touched something I shouldn't have inside a CRT with a screwdriver... Let's just say I don't fuck with CRT monitors anymore.

Edit: Holy hell that image was larger than I thought.. Linked it instead of embedding.

Edit2: Almost had a complete OH SHIT moment just now.  I am sure glad imgur strips exif data.. I looked at the original, plugged in the lat/long recorded, and google maps showed me a picture of my house... scary.

[lacedwithkerosene]

tito, sounds like a decent track record compared to some   (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18539)

[Swishercutter]

  I think the most frightening was when I touched something I shouldn't have inside a CRT with a screwdriver... Let's just say I don't fuck with CRT monitors anymore.

[/quote]

Output of the flyback transformer...very high voltage.

[tito13kfm]

tito, sounds like a decent track record compared to some   (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18539)

"I plugged the HDD and DVD drive into the 12V PCI-E power ports rather than the 5V ones"

I call bullshit.  I hate to do it, but I call it.  Unless there is a picture of the aftermath, I'm not going to believe it.  Even if you assume he wired up his own connector, somehow ignored the fact that the red wire was connected to a yellow one, and got it to spin up:  You have to remember that a HDD is encased in metal.  The platters are NOT going to blow through it.

This story is less believable than the heat stroke one.  They are funny anecdotes, but don't have a shred of truth in them.

 I think the most frightening was when I touched something I shouldn't have inside a CRT with a screwdriver... Let's just say I don't fuck with CRT monitors anymore.

Output of the flyback transformer...very high voltage.

No explosions or being blown back 20+ feet as you would imagine.  Just a very large, and very bright spark and the screwdriver ended up flying out of my hand (still not sure if I threw it instinctively or if it was forcibly ejected)