Don't trust power adapters without cutting them open!

[pickleburglar]

Today I was switching out a bad hard drive in my farm and noticed something odd, the wires on a 2xmolex -> PCIE8P adapter were sticking together and I couldn't discern a border between them.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out the wires had melted together, I was extremely fortunate that the yellow and black wires were in such a position that they didn't mix and cause a short.

Anyways, I had used the same adapter in other places around the farm, I checked all of them and surely enough, all of them had signs of degradation. Some were melting, some were charring in places, I removed all of them.

So the next step, I cut one of the adapters up to check the wires inside, this is what I found (the yellow one):

https://i.imgur.com/P2l7YZI.jpg

The yellow one is from the molten adapter and is supposed to be 18 AWG (written on the cable as well as the product page in aliexpress where I bought it from).

The black one for comparison is a piece of good quality 20 AWG wire, the black ones core has around twice the diameter!

I don't have a tool to measure gauges that small but by eyeballing it, I'd say the adapter wires are around 24 AWG, not even close to 18.

I got off easy here but a cautionary tale to all: when buying a batch of adapters, get one extra to cut it open and look inside, this could have ended a lot more expensively.

[1715146293]

1715146293

[CryptoWatcher420]

I make my own, its a well worth skill to pick up. especially those that have many rigs

[MrN1ce9uy]

Most would be quick to tell you not to use molex adapters on your GPUs.

[pickleburglar]

I make my own, its a well worth skill to pick up. especially those that have many rigs

Funny you should mention that, I've been picking the connectors open for the last hour to replace the wire. Getting pretty handy with a hypodermic needle to push in the barbs.

replacement comparison
https://i.imgur.com/MwOc3rZ.jpg

[CryptoWatcher420]

I make my own, its a well worth skill to pick up. especially those that have many rigs

Funny you should mention that, I've been picking the connectors open for the last hour to replace the wire. Getting pretty handy with a hypodermic needle to push in the barbs.

replacement comparison

omg guy theres a cheap tool to do that for you, makes it soooo much easier I know cause I have the little tool made by molex.

btw gawd what size them wires that red one looks like 18 or 16, but that yellow one be really skimpy lookin maybe 20 guage?

[Metroid]

So true, cut it open and check if the line can withstand the load.

[Vann]

According to AWG standards 18 AWG wire is only 1 mm thick in diameter. Going by your pictures it certainly seems to be at least that thickness. The problem is 18 AWG wire is only rated for 10 A max for single core wire, which is 120 W at 12 V and much less for multi stand wire. A GPU dual mining can easily pull 150 W+ from the VGA connector. I had a similar issue with the same type of dual molex to 8-pin connector. Now I only use 18 AWG splitters for 6-pin risers and 16 AWG for 8-pin PCI-E connectors.

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wire-gauges-d_419.html

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2571737.msg26194468

[Elder III]

According to AWG standards 18 AWG wire is only 1 mm thick in diameter. Going by your pictures it certainly seems to be at least that thickness. The problem is 18 AWG wire is only rated for 10 A max for single core wire, which is 120 W at 12 V and much less for multi stand wire. A GPU dual mining can easily pull 150 W+ from the VGA connector. I had a similar issue with the same type of dual molex to 8-pin connector. Now I only use 18 AWG splitters for 6-pin risers and 16 AWG for 8-pin PCI-E connectors.

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wire-gauges-d_419.html

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2571737.msg26194468

Yes, I was going to post essentially the same thing but you saved me the effort.

We only use 16 AWG PCI-E splitters on GTX 1080 or higher GPUs (higher power draw that is). If you buy from reputable places and verify the quality before using them it goes pretty well.

You can check the gauge of the wire with a cheap wire stripper or even some multi-tools (Leatherman etc..) have that feature.

[pickleburglar]

omg guy theres a cheap tool to do that for you, makes it soooo much easier I know cause I have the little tool made by molex.

yea definitely gonna have to get one of those, my fingers are killing me 

According to AWG standards 18 AWG wire is only 1 mm thick in diameter. Going by your pictures it certainly seems to be at least that thickness.

Its totally not though, its closer to half a millimeter in diameter. The black wire next to it is 20 AWG, the yellow one is thicker on the outside but its got a ridiculous core to insulation ratio.

Makes me wonder why they do this, why skimp so hard on the wire and make a useless (and dangerous) product if for a few extra cents they could make a good one...

The card it was connected to was a rx480 tuned for power efficiency, according to hwinfo, the card pulls around 80w and even that was enough to melt it.

[Facinat]

omg guy theres a cheap tool to do that for you, makes it soooo much easier I know cause I have the little tool made by molex.

yea definitely gonna have to get one of those, my fingers are killing me 

According to AWG standards 18 AWG wire is only 1 mm thick in diameter. Going by your pictures it certainly seems to be at least that thickness.

Its totally not though, its closer to half a millimeter in diameter. The black wire next to it is 20 AWG, the yellow one is thicker on the outside but its got a ridiculous core to insulation ratio.

Makes me wonder why they do this, why skimp so hard on the wire and make a useless (and dangerous) product if for a few extra cents they could make a good one...

The card it was connected to was a rx480 tuned for power efficiency, according to hwinfo, the card pulls around 80w and even that was enough to melt it.

80 W is about 7A, divided by 2 wires, it should be around 3.5A. So the quality of the wire is very bad then.