Poor day with burned PCIE Riser

[fk1]

Today I successfully f**ked up a PCIE Riser + 1x Slot + 1060.

I am just a beginner in building mining rigs, got some experience in gaming pcs. I already had 3 GPUs mounted directly to the board because my ordered risers take some time shipping. Since I got one 1060 shipped fast I decided to order another riser from eBay to get this 1060 running quicker. eBay Link: https://www.ebay.de/itm/201748846321

I heard about bad soldered risers so I checked the looks for a problem but seemed good.

First thing I noticed was the riser wasn't fitting well. wobbeling inside the port, at first the rig did not boot. It was a little bit tricky for me to figure out what was the problem because simoultaneously I was also waiting for better PSU.

I decided to test using 2x600W PSUs: I powered the riser with molex from PSU that was powering also the motherboard and the second PSU was only for powering the new GPU with 6pin Pcie only.

I switched on 1st PSU, then 2nd, then fired up the rig by powerbutton. no boot. I was curious about that wobbleing riser so I decided to insert it in various ways until it began to boot. everything was working. But every time I needed to reboot or power off the rig the problem with not booting returned.

One time I plugged riser in and out with turned off rig but power on PSU1. PSU2 was disabled. when I pulled the riser from pcie port and stick it in again suddenly the rig started up even though I hadn't touched the powerbutton!

In the end I had to shutdown the rig for another time: I tried several clockings until GPUs crashed. weird thing here was: even when the power limit for gpu0 was set to 100, it only used 30w when mining. when I changed this max power limit, it worked again but other GPUs hashrate went down. So I tried to reboot but again the rig became stucked.

I tried putting the riser into slot in and out several times. it seems that I accidentally plugged the riser into the port wrong sided one last time, after that I smelled burned plastic and switched off everything so the death of riser and gpu is my own fault.

This should be a lesson for me. So what I still need to know for the future: When using 2 Power supply, is it correct to power mainboard + riser with 1st PSU and GPUs with 2nd? Why was my rig not booting/shutting down correctly? was it a powering problem or a riser-fitting problem? Maybe it wasn't booting properly because too many GPUs connected directly instead of using powered riser for all?!

hf roasting my dumb ass

[priviet]

I can't tell you THE correct way but I can tell you the way it works for me (with much more expensive cards, eg 1080ti)

One Power Supply for the CPU+MB (~300W)

Then more Power Supplys to power the Cards AND the Risers (same Power Supply for Card and corresponding Riser). So there is only data connection between the two PSU, no VCC so no difference current between two different 12V rails. That much caution may not be needed but I'm driving safe.

[fk1]

what do you mean with data connection? I just connected 2nd psu with pcie and bridged to start. was looking forward to use this to start the psus https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01NH0U804/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[adaseb]

You probably plugged it into a 16x slot backwards, you can't plug the riser into a 1x slot backwards, it won't let you.

[fk1]

damn, I was so disappointed about myself the whole day but now that you mentioned I had another look and indeed it is the wrong burned pin to be this wrong-side fail. this is my burned riser:

http://imgur.com/a/GM1cJ

Now I'm wondering what really went wrong...btw: it really was one of the small 1x slots

[adaseb]

You might of put it in at an angle where the +12v and the GND were crossing.

http://pinouts.ru/Slots/pci_express_pinout.shtml

[nu1mlock]

I'm assuming you either shorted the pins on the second PSU or used an adapter or add2psu in order for the second PSU to start? Because just powering it on on the button doesn't actually start the second PSU.

If you didn't, then that could explain why the GPU would only use 30W power, since that GPU would only draw power from the riser.

[fk1]

@adaseb: yes, that is likely the case because it wasn't fitting properly so i tried to. are these poor riser or are risers usually not fitting well?

@nu1mlock: you are right i shorted pins on the 2nd supply. when the 30w fail appeared i had the same idea but

1. psu was running
2. i changed power limit live and the GPU adjusted power.

the riser GPU is dead. i tested it on a tyan server board and get error code for graphic failure.

the other cards are running for now. I had them running for the first time after riser flamed up. they ran half an hour when suddenly they all dropped to 5mh/s. After reboot everything normal running for >1 hour. I was shocked that maybe I had the whole rig damaged...

[evakka]

I am using an ADD2psu adapter for almost 3 months without any issues.

First PSU powers up motherboard and two GPUs with their risers and
The second PSU is powering up the other two GPUs with their sets as well.

The sequence is, turning on the second PSU at first and then the main one