My Computer Burned I Think

[DebitMe]

I am having some trouble with the computer that I build a few weeks ago.  For the last 2 days I have been finding it randomly shutting down and restarting, which I was attributing to Windows Update installing updates, but last night my gf said she smelled burning plastic when it shut down and resat and I turned it off overnight and was planning to look at it this morning. This morning I decided to turn it on and start mining, since it usually takes a few hours to restart, and went to go work out in my living room.  About 20 minutes later there was a strong smell of burning and I ran into my room to find that it had shut down again.  This smell of burning though was much stronger than last night, but the weird thing is, I am unable to find anything that actually melted.

I proceeded to open up the computer and check all of the connectors going to and from the PSU.  They all seem to be intact and were not too hot to the touch.  Here are the specs of my computer...

1200 Watt NZXT PSU  (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817116022)
3 r280X Sapphire Edition
4th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-4770K 3.5GHz LGA 1150 Processor
GA-Z87X-UD4H Socket LGA 1150 ATX
16 gig RAM
a CD drive and a 2 TB harddrive

My only thought is that the power supply could not handle the load, and inside the power supply is where the melting happened.  Does anyone else have any ideas or other places that I should look?  Hopefully its just the power supply and I can buy a higher rated wattage to get back up and running, but I am not totally sure.  Any ideas would be appreciated and welcomed.

Thanks!

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[DebitMe]

Also looking for advice on how to troubleshoot from here so I know what is safe to plug in.

[DebitMe]

I am thinking that the 1200 watt PSU could not handle the load of 3 280X graphics cards?  I thought they only pulled 300 watts ea, but it sounds like at full load they use closer to 400 watts, which combined with a good processor, fans, 16 gigs of RAM, probably was too much for it.  Any thoughts on this revelation?

[nachius]

Remove the Power Supply from the system and smell it away from the rest of the computer.  If it is in fact a burnt PSU you will know rather quickly.

From there if it does not smell burnt strip the PC down to bare bones - board, 1 stick of memory (memory shouldn't smell like burn't plastic, but basic troubleshooting here), PSU, and user the on board video and see if it posts without smell of something burning.  Add pieces back after shutting it down 1 at a time until you find what is wrong. Test each video card individually directly in slot without riser wash rinse repeat.

First blush sounds like power supply overworked and overheating, but do the basic troubleshooting to find out for sure!

[Kiah07]

Don't forget, it could be your house wiring overheating inside the walls if you are overloading the wire size.  Sometimes breakers are too large for the small house wiring if it's a DIY wiring.  This can cause wires to oveheat and burn wall insulation before the breaker ever trips.  Just a heads up. 

[vadoff]

Are you using powered risers?

[DebitMe]

Are you using powered risers?

I have 2 plugged into the MOBO and one on a powered riser, the MOBO has a slot to plug in an extra cable for extra power to the PCI slots, so it should be able to handle 2 cards plugged in no problem, and with the powered riser on the other card, it should be able to handle all 3.

Thanks guys for the suggestions and comments, I am pretty sure it is the power supply which was the culprit, although I am still not sure why as I do not believe I exceeded the max load of it, perhaps just got a crappy one.  I am going to try to get a refund for it from newegg, and get one that has a higher watt rating and go from there.

[vadoff]

It's weird that it would be the PSU imo.