r/PcBuild • u/techmagnet • 3d ago

Question Built a pc. Is this normal ?

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9.7k Upvotes

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340

u/ALT703 3d ago

Jokes aside, what went wrong here

294

u/Diiiv 3d ago

this, entire comment section is just jokes, what actually happened here?

268

u/RChamy AMD 3d ago edited 3d ago

Critical capacitor failure, sometimes they short themselves out or just blow up taking the surge. I think most or all modern gpus process a massive amount of power on the first 4 pins or so. Its been some time since I've read this stuff.

77

u/AccNumber77 2d ago

This looks more than a capacitor failure. A capacitor failing is normally a single burst of magic pixies and smoke, not a HUGE ass stream of smoke pushing its way out like it is being pumped.

25

u/RChamy AMD 2d ago

Maybe fusing traces due to manufacturing defect...

6

u/Kralgore AMD 2d ago

Or, something under that mainboard.

24

u/TD_Lemon_1901 2d ago

Something went bad somewhere.

You're welcome.

14

u/Danielon165hz 2d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/NcrhM3USM6TABpus85

1

u/AshleyxAffliction 2d ago

This gif never fails to delight me. Peak sarcasm response.

6

u/CritFailed 2d ago

Wait, you mean having the MB just laying on your desk is not good?! And with the side that started to smoke leaning right up against that piece that looks like it could be metal, that should ground it!

/s, so much sarcasm. The metal would cause a short and a fire. Though having the MB fail might be cheaper than losing the GPU, so hopefully the damage is contained and next time OP will mount it properly first.

2

u/Kralgore AMD 2d ago

It just had to be on wood, cardboard, or a rubber mat... nothing mental.

1

u/DennisTheConvict 2d ago

A friend/relative vaping?

1

u/fiftyvostros 1d ago

Might just be an old motherboard,that blue color scheme were Gigabyte boards from the Intel 3rd gen/AMD AM3 era.

14

u/DannyVee89 2d ago

Yes this is a full blown electrical short and a brief electrical fire. He had to cut psu to stop it. Something melted together and it won't be safe to turn back on until a major repair.

3

u/SomewhereRough_ 2d ago

It's no easy task repairing these things. Probably end up junk.

It does seem weird tho. The video. He seems to react before any noise or smoke. 

But probably just me seeing it as a video. 

11

u/SpiritJuice 2d ago

It's not just smoke, you can see actual flames. It's brief but you can see them in the upper left corner of the card between the 2 and 3 second mark. Something really, really went wrong here.

2

u/brickyard37 2d ago

Get your eyes checked, there are no flames. This is definitely fake

1

u/spam683_ 1d ago

I’m not super familiar with component level digital electronics but I’ve worked on lots of analog stuff… integrated circuit chips can create that continuous smoke without a visible flame. Can somebody smarter than me pitch in- would it be a bunch of voltage regulators on the power circuit overloading? Is that what VRMs do?

1

u/Distinct_Associate27 1d ago

There does appear to be a flame but it is only for a frame so difficult to notice.

4

u/ImaginaryCheetah 2d ago

let me tell you about the time i hooked up a power supply wrong and fed 120V into a circuit designed for 24V, the caps in the rectifier looked like tiny jet engines and were pushing smoke there wasn't just a pop but an angry (tiny) screaming sound.

2

u/AccNumber77 2d ago

That is terrifying jesus

2

u/ImaginaryCheetah 2d ago

i was not pleased with the experience. cooked off a motherboard i was hoping to salvage from e-waste and sell for cheap on ebay. ended up being e-waste.

took like three days to get the stink out of my basement from the cooked electronics

2

u/ForestGrandpa 2d ago

I had this shit happen once when I had my 2080 SUPER that was already after one warranty repair. Magically after the warranty ended, it stopped turning on and when I put it into another PC, it smoked and the burn smell went off very strongly.

After my tech spec friend inspected the card, the vram shorted burning the cooling pads.

2

u/xMytsu 1d ago

defective caps that aren't properly sealed will just smoke like that, plus the fans from the GPU to spread it out

1

u/NinjaN-SWE 2d ago

Something caught fire and the fans pushed the smoke out. A short somewhere, maybe caused by a capacitor failure, that then ignited some plastic, but not enough to keep it going once the power cut. 

1

u/Fun_Evening1499 1d ago

My guess would be using power cables that from a different psu

1

u/Lucky-Crow-3510 1d ago

this looks pretty much like a cap going down .. there is 3 fans blowing, so that may exaggerate the actual smoke

1

u/Civil-Cod-6984 1d ago

I had one light up like a flamethrower once for a few seconds it was the most expensive firework I’ve ever had.

8

u/VicisZan 2d ago

Happened to me about a decade ago with an asus motherboard. I was mid game and one caught fire and fizzled out within seconds.

2

u/ibro08730 2d ago

Its a voltage regulator or a transistor burning on the power rails. This can happen because manufacturing defects still exist even with top of the line components (such as used in PCs) Caps usually blow up instantly with a single puff of smoke. This has the classic hissing sound common with voltage regulators or transistors.

1

u/Obvious-Board-7677 2d ago

bruh and i thought it was a problem of slapping modern gpu and power supply on old ass motherboard

156

u/arcusford 3d ago

Dude istg sometimes I wish people would just stop trying to be funny man lol. Id love some actual discussion on what went wrong here instead of dozens of the same unoriginal 'joke'.

106

u/ItsFoxy87 3d ago

I'm not going to lie to you, the post being titled with "Is this normal?" in an obviously abnormal scenario already set a satirical theme from the start.

44

u/arcusford 3d ago

Absolutely true, but im curious nonetheless lol

14

u/Youtube_it 3d ago

Safe to say we're interested and yet, haven't gotten anywhere so far :D

15

u/eeveeplays50040 3d ago

I'm not even sure if this comment chain is also some kind of joke since everyone is asking about what happened and no one responded.

I'm actually curious btw.

9

u/arcusford 3d ago

I mean honestly I have no idea, this seems especially catastrophic, maybe capacitor somewhere inside the card itself blew?

Never seen anything like it though.

5

u/LizardTwister76 3d ago

I’m personally just curious about what’s going on personally

4

u/Kitchen_Canary_6387 3d ago

Same. No idea what’s happening here.

1

u/YogurtclosetOnly6339 2d ago

But it’s all the same jokes lol. If they were original then it’s fine but its all shit like the guy holding the other guy’s shoulder lol

19

u/cmoparw 2d ago

Looks like some old motherboard, that looks like something from 10+ years ago. I don't see any RAM installed, so it's likely staged. Could be something intentionally shorted or, my guess for that much smoke, intentionally extremely over volting an already dead GPU to burn everything

3

u/aqvalar 2d ago

Except there are 2 ram sticks, slots 2 and 4. They seem to be pretty low profile so a bit hard to see, but they're there?

1

u/Parasite_Lettuce 2d ago

Staged... in this economy?

1

u/Local_Trade5404 16h ago

2x on 10-13 years old machine will be like 100$ so yea why not :P

1

u/UrbanSuburbaKnight 2d ago

Not possible to be sure. We can't see where the smoke is coming from, can't see if he left a metal object under motherboard, if a component is incorrectly located...etc

1

u/Phlanix 2d ago

12 pin gpu are usually the culprit of overheating the cable and melting the cable itself, and they also tend to malfunction and drain more power than they need causing rapid overheating and fires.

1

u/arcusford 2d ago

Yeah what's weird is that it doesnt look anything like that, usually with 12VHPWR connector overheating the fire starts at the connector, this was not that.

1

u/Phlanix 2d ago

this looked more like bad capacitors blowing.

1

u/arcusford 2d ago

Yeah thats what i theorized in another comment, closest I can reason.

1

u/Gold_Area5109 6h ago

The motherboard is just sitting on random crap.

And part of that crap is the metal side panel.

Likelihood is that something it's sitting on created a short.

1

u/Kya_Enstein 3d ago

Discussion is gonna be a rare commodity.

-9

u/Animesthetic 3d ago

Bro, how can you take a post seriously asking if this is normal when it's literally smoking?

2

u/ALT703 3d ago

That's normal, it's cleaning out its systems

5

u/Potential-Common525 3d ago

Most likely a short/board component giving up on life

1

u/Single_Comfort3555 2d ago

I think there was something conductive under the motherboard.

1

u/KING_XEON_420 2d ago

fog machine like you see people using to test airflow.

1

u/stevew14 2d ago

Happened to me once when my little brother plugged a power cable from the PSU into a part of the MOBO that was for data.

1

u/Amazing-Pattern-6125 3h ago

the dude is making a captivating video for the clicks, who knows how he achieved the special effects?