Antec Earthwatts 430 caught on fire and fried my PC!!

[msi1337]

put in an antec earthwatts 430w in what was basically a low end compaq computer. Power supply was purchased in 06/2008 and ran the system fine until last week when a flame shot from the power supply and caused a fire until the power supply was unplugged and the fire died out. I would expect this type of thing to happen to some no name cheapie power supply. but this is Antec's flagship 80+ power supply!

Anyways, along with the nice fire and smoke comes the death of many of the parts of the system. As yet, not all parts are 100% tested. Listing what I know as of this post. Also, I am curious what others think Antec will do to try to resolve this, as the parts which died in this pc were directly related to the untimely death of the Antec Earthwatts 430w.

Computer Parts:
E4300 CPU - works great.. thanks Intel for a quality product!
1.5TB Seagate Hard Drive - works great
160GB Hard Drive - seems to work fine. Normal operation.
775 Motherboard - extremely charred on two corners
MSI 8600GT Video Card - extremely charred on top edge (RMA'ed)
Antec PSU - smelled strongly of smoke (condition unknown, RMA'ed)
2x1GB DDR2-800 Super Talent memory - works fine after reseating in a brand new motherboard
16X Lite-On IDE DVDRW - burn marks near molex connector -drive had problems ejecting so I tossed it
16x DVD drive - does not power on, no burn marks noted
7.1 sound card - seems to work fine

 

[pmv]

Ouch.

I don't have any expert knowledge to share, sorry. But I was under the impression that no PSU manufacturer, good or otherwise, accepts liability for consequent damage?

One, slightly out-there, entirely speculative, thought that occurs to me is - as this was technically a fire, albeit one restricted to the PC, don't suppose there's any chance your household contents insurance might cover it?

Also, those pictures made me shudder in horror, its the sort thing I have nightmares about.

 

[Meghan54]

I would expect this type of thing to happen to some no name cheapie power supply. but this is Antec's flagship 80+ power supply!

Sorry to hear/see what happened to you. But that comment above, the "flagship" one......an Earthwatts power supply is anything but a flagship power supply, except maybe if it was being sold by Deer. (Hint: the EA line is one step above Antec's lowest line, the Basiq line.....and several giant steps below Antec's flagship Signature line.)

 

[Meghan54]

But on second and a longer look at your pics, it almost looks like your video card was what really caught on fire and caused the damage, not the power supply.

Why?

The smoke pattern on the bottom of the power supply indicates smoke coming from below it and going upward around the bottom and sides, not the other way around.

The video card is badly charred, but your sound card, sitting right next to it, is unscathed by flame. If the power supply was "shooting flames" downward to the video card to char it, the sound card would have surely been hit, too.

None of the mesh covering on the main ATX power cable has been melted...and that stuff would surely melt if hit with active flames jetting out of the power supply.

And the side cover of the case shows the fire was centered well below the power supply as the heaviest smoke was in the middle of the case's side and moved upward to the power supply's location, another indication that the video card should be your first suspect.


But, some pics of yours to demonstrate.......


http://jamayer.org/pics/fire/antec2.JPG

In this picture of yours, you can see how the fire's smoke hit the bottom of the power supply, then curled up the side of the ps's side and moved toward the side vent, taking the smoke into it because the exhaust fan was pulling the smoke into it as the fan ran.

Arrows #1 and #2 show the smoke is heavier underneath the power supply and lighter on the side, a sure sign that the smoke was striking the power supply from below then curling around and up the ps's side.

And if you closely look, the sound card just above the video card has smoke traces on it, but no active burning marks. If the power supply was shooting flames downward to char the video card, then surely the sound card would have been hit, too, but it wasn't.

Instead, the sound card, being shorter toward the case's side than the video card, missed getting hit with the "flame" coming off the video card, but got slightly hit by the smoke moving up to the top of the case......very light smoke traces on the outer edge of the sound card.


http://jamayer.org/pics/fire/antec4.JPG


As the arrows demonstrate in this picture, the smoke is moving upward from below the power supply up the sides.....as smoke would move, esp. with an exhaust fan pulling it to help its movement.



http://jamayer.org/pics/fire/antec5.JPG

In this pic, we see no flame damage on the rear of the power supply.....and I'm sure the dust would have shown some evidence of flame if there was in fact flames inside the power supply.


http://jamayer.org/pics/fire/antec8.JPG

Another pic of the power supply......the front, which shows no charring or melting of the wiring which surely would have happened had the flames originated within the power supply itself. Instead, we can see nothing damaging the wiring or mesh covering over the cables nor much of any evidence anything came out of it. But we do see some smoke migrating into the vent, being pulled, again, by the exhaust fan into the power supply.



http://jamayer.org/pics/fire/antec7.JPG

Finally, the case's side panel. Notice how at arrow #1 the smoke is heaviest, just over where the video card resides, and how it gets lighter as it moves upward to where the power supply resides, arrow #2. (Please forgive my amateurish drawing...it's early.) Smoke, as well as flame, move upward, not down. The smoke marks are moving up away from the source of the flame---the video card.



I honestly think the motherboard started shorting out along that burnt edge, overloaded the video card somehow and started it on fire. The power supply was completely uninvolved. Of course the fire stopped when it was unplugged since the ps was providing the energy for the fire, but that's about it.

Just my theory.

 

[msi1337]

Meghan54. Thanks so much for your thorough investigation of this. The only thing I will have to check is the damage inside the power supply. I believed that the flame shot from the side vent of the power supply and due to the limited space between the side of the psu and the case, it caused the burn marks as seen on the side panel. As I look again, I see what you mean...it looks like the video card or motherboard became an issue first...which still could have been caused by an overvoltage of the psu.

 

[Meghan54]

I'm still of the mind that the motherboard shorted out first, causing an overvolting of the video card, given the motherboard is charred well away from any exposure to the power supply.

Also, if the side vent did emit the flame/smoke, why are most of the vent holes fairly clean and why is the smoke concentrated half way down the case side panel instead of being concentrated at the top of the panel where the side vent is located?

It wasn't the power supply, it was more probably a mb failure leading to the video card failure. The power supply just supplied the current requested by the shorting/failing motherboard and that's not really a fault of the power supply.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet if you plugged that power supply into another computer, the pc would just simply boot up and run without issue.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

this is one of the reasons why i dont' leave my pc's on 24/7.
imagine you weren't home to unplug it. bye bye house.

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

this is one of the reasons why i dont' leave my pc's on 24/7.
imagine you weren't home to unplug it. bye bye house.

That's why I keep my PC on at home all the time, but I also keep pictures of everything I own at work and hold onto the receipts .

That would suck tho if it happened when you were away from it. I question how far the fire would have made it inside of a metal case, but I guess in a worst case scenario, it could have spread beyond the PC.

 

[MrK6]

Wow, great pics, sorry about your PC. Excellent work Meghan54, I was considering some of that from looking at the pictures. I'm very curious to see what the inside of the PSU looks like (make sure you're very careful taking it apart).

 

[taisingera]

MSI 8600GT Video Card

While all the theories of either the PSU blowing out and then voltage regulators on the mobo failing and taking out the video card may be possible, just the fact that you have that video card makes me think it was one of those malfunctioning Nvidia chips. Of course usually in a laptop when they go, the display just stops working, this seems to be a rare catastrophe with fire.

 

[JEDIYoda]

put in an antec earthwatts 430w in what was basically a low end compaq computer. Power supply was purchased in 06/2008 and ran the system fine until last week when a flame shot from the power supply and caused a fire until the power supply was unplugged and the fire died out. I would expect this type of thing to happen to some no name cheapie power supply. but this is Antec's flagship 80+ power supply! -- Just because the PSU is 80+ certified that has nothing to do with the build quality or workmanship of the PSU!!

Anyways, along with the nice fire and smoke comes the death of many of the parts of the system. As yet, not all parts are 100% tested. Listing what I know as of this post. Also, I am curious what others think Antec will do to try to resolve this, as the parts which died in this pc were directly related to the untimely death of the Antec Earthwatts 430w.

Computer Parts:
E4300 CPU - yet untested. some slight discoloration on the copper contacts on the bottom
1.5TB Seagate Hard Drive - drive shows up in bios, slight clicking sound. It appears to make more noise than it previously did as well. Read/writes not tested yet.
160GB Hard Drive - seems to work fine. Normal operation.
775 Motherboard - extremely charred on two corners
MSI 8600GT Video Card - extremely charred on top edge (looks like due to resistors, not contact with the flame)
Antec PSU - Char marks coming from hole in side, showing direction of flame
2x1GB DDR2-800 Super Talent memory - numerous errors in Memtest86+ with one stick. the other stick seems fine.
16X Lite-On IDE DVDRW - burn marks near molex connector - not going to attempt to test
16x DVD drive - does not power on, no burn marks noted
7.1 sound card - seems to work fine

pics can be found here:

http://www.msi1337.com/images/antec

............80+..........

 

[tomoyo]

Sorry for the computer loss issues, always sucks to have this happen.

I do want to mention that this is nowhere near a flagship psu. It's a good budget psu, keyword budget. This is the same psu that sometimes you can get for $30-40 at Frys, not a $200 antec signature series psu. In general it's a great low cost choice, but obviously not every psu is going to work perfectly. There are definitely questions as to whether the psu failed first or something in the mobo or video card as mentioned above, unfortunately I doubt anyone will know for sure :/

 

[msi1337]

spoke with the antec rep today and they are going to replace the power supply under warranty. I mistakenly used the term flagship, but what I meant was..its still a world better than some of the lower end cheapie power supplies..by no means is it high end.

anyways, after cleaning off the cpu again I got it to post in another computer!! woot!

other items are a loss, but not a big one..all the items should be able to be replaced under warranty with the exception of the motherboard (which I could care less about)

 

[Meghan54]

Good to hear the mostly positive outcome!

There are definitely questions as to whether the psu failed first or something in the mobo or video card as mentioned above, unfortunately I doubt anyone will know for sure :/

Of course, opening up the power supply would instantly show if it was involved or not, but then that would void his warranty. Best to just RMA it.....even if it wasn't the root cause, it should have turned off from OCP protection if the short was on the motherboard, so there may be a problem in the ps anyway.

 

[yh125d]

Yeah I'm surprised they're replacing it, it seems pretty obvious it was a GPU fire (good detective work meg)


I suppose the PSU *could* have caused the fire though, by sending way too much power to the GPU, but its just as likely that the short occured on the board itself

 

[Ken90630]

As Paris Hilton might say, "That's hot!"


Sorry ... thought a little humour might lighten up an otherwise bummer situation.

C'mon, admit it, you chuckled a little.

 

[Motorheader]

Good to hear that no one was hurt and no significant loss was caused by this.

I used to do PC insurance work for several local places, including insurance companies. From the pictures that doesn't look like a PSU fire. It wouldn't burn down or to the side - there isn't room, it would burn out the back because of the negative pressure created by the cooling fan (following the path of least resistance). As stated before, that looks like a fire from something other than the PSU.

Nice pictures though.

 

[vshah]

what about the rest of it? time to plan a new build?!

 

[Modelworks]

I would say the fire started on the video card and the fan pulling air drew the flame towards it. In this picture http://jamayer.org/pics/fire/antec2.JPG the video card has melted material into the PCB. PCB are made from FR-4 material that doesn't burn until it reaches 300F or higher. To melt it requires about 650F . It will not stay burning because the material is not self sustaining , it requires another heat source. I suspect two layers of the PCB touched, shorting and melting the PCB between. The PSU would have probably stayed running if it was not unplugged because the power limits were not reached, it was on the other side of the voltage regulator on the card so as far as the PSU was concerned the regulator was drawing normal current. I have seen it many times where voltage regulators continue to supply current to burning parts.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Damn man, that's the worst I've seen. That really lighted up your PC.

Even so i don't think the fire would have spread out of the pc.

 

[msi1337]

thanks for all the input. It was a rare case indeed. whether the fire started on the edge of the motherboard, or the edge of the video card.. it still remains a mystery. I managed to get some of the other components working.. the original CPU and memory are now working in a new build and the PSU and video card have both been RMA'ed. I probably didnt have to have the PSU replaced, but it smelled something terrible and Antec offered..so I took them up on it.

 

[Lunyone]

This is the same experience I've had with the Antec RMA process twice in my life (2 seperate PSU's). This kind of support makes me want to buy more Antec PSU's

 

[Slaimus]

My EA430 just died today, although in much less dramatic fasion. It just shut down suddenly and won't power on.

From your pictures, it appears the primary cap blew up, which is surprising. The Seasonic-built Earthwatts all had high grade Japanese caps. Mine has a Hitachi cap and those are supposed to be very well made.

I did notice the secondary cap is "OST RLX", which according to their website is only rated for 2000 hours of "load life". Maybe that secondary cap blew and ruptured the primary cap.

 

[HOOfan 1]

From your pictures, it appears the primary cap blew up, which is surprising. The Seasonic-built Earthwatts all had high grade Japanese caps. Mine has a Hitachi cap and those are supposed to be very well made.

where did you see a picture of the primary cap?

 

[Meghan54]

where did you see a picture of the primary cap?

He didn't because the caps inside the power supply in question are in perfect shape.