Help with a golden shower

[nostradamus]

Found this morning that one of my rigs had shut down on its own over night. I cycled the power on the PSU and switched it on. A pop of yellow sparks sprayed 10 inches up and out of the PSU exhaust fan.

Rig:
3 x 7870 on a 1250w OCZ PSU
1 x 7950 on a 750w PSU that is powering nothing else

Stock voltage, on unpowered risers. No molex adapters used. 2 weeks of uptime before this incident.

What happened? I'd prefer to not burn this mother down.

Thanks for helping with my golden shower problem!

[BBQKorv]

Found this morning that one of my rigs had shut down on its own over night. I cycled the power on the PSU and switched it on. A pop of yellow sparks sprayed 10 inches up and out of the PSU exhaust fan.

Rig:
3 x 7870 on a 1250w OCZ PSU
1 x 7950 on a 750w PSU that is powering nothing else

Stock voltage, on unpowered risers. No molex adapters used. 2 weeks of uptime before this incident.

What happened? I'd prefer to not burn this mother down.

Thanks for helping with my golden shower problem!

Tell the exact make and model of the blown PSU and we'll tell whats going on.
How have you linked the PSUs or do you start them separately?

[nostradamus]

OCZ-ZX1250W

The other PSU just has pins shorted to run without mobo and is providing PCI-E for one card only. I generally flip it on at the same time as I power on the rig. Coincidentally, I left it off when I tried to power it up today.

[BBQKorv]

Okey, maybe the PSU was just a bad monday item. Get a new one on warranty and I would run that whole rig on one PSU, 1250W must be enough for all of those 4 cards. Those cards do have a total TDP of 725W.

If you carefully underclock your CPU and that 7950 you could run the whole rig temporarily with that 750W PSU, provided it's a quality brand.

7950 200W TDP
7870 175W TDP

[kpriess]

I would suggest you to get a quality PSU, not OCZ.. Look for a Corsair, Antec, or anything made by Seasonic..

[nostradamus]

Thanks for the advice. Bad PSU is the obvious answer. I actually have a duplicate 1250w ready to swap out, but I am wondering if there are any other possible causes, eg. a short on the motherboard or an issue with the power from the wall.

I agree that OCZ is not the best brand out there, but I was only running at 60% rated power!

[CoinHoarder]

A PSU was not exactly the first thing that came to my mind when I read golden shower.

-Kanye West

[miter_myles]

A PSU was not exactly the first thing that came to my mind when I read golden shower.

-R Kelly

FTFY

[CoinHoarder]

FTFY

Same thing.. african american R&B singer...

Oh darn it.. I tried to rationalize my epic fail, however all I can do is <mega face palm>!

[nostradamus]

...I was starting to think no one would catch on.