Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-05, 06:46:

Not bought today but a 3060ti and X570 motherboard combo I bought very recently just set itself on fire, took the poor thing apa […]
Show full quote

Not bought today but a 3060ti and X570 motherboard combo I bought very recently just set itself on fire, took the poor thing apart to find the 3060 has committed sepuku and taken the X570 board with it.

From the looks of it the small power connector on the PCIe finger has melted through to the ground plane, if there was caps there they are also no more, made quite a mess of the fingers too and the slot on the motherboard was melted, it also toasted the BIOS battery and associated SMDs that sit next to the PCIe slot. (VRM is also next to the PCIe slot ...)

Haven't tested the CPU and Ram yet nor the PSU but considering the amount of power the GPU let lose and damage done I'm expecting PSU to have sacrificed itself stopping the power surge. The GPU was in use when it happened playing APEX so yeah .. it was quite the light and smoke show.

Im not expecting the CPU or ram to have survived the show but I wont know till I test them on another board.

Damn house now stinks of magic smoke.

That sucks big time. Melting power connectors have been a thing for a few years now.

It happens a lot with 4090s, a very costly magic smoke machine.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-03-05, 10:57:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-05, 06:46:

Not bought today but a 3060ti and X570 motherboard combo I bought very recently just set itself on fire, took the poor thing apa […]
Show full quote

Not bought today but a 3060ti and X570 motherboard combo I bought very recently just set itself on fire, took the poor thing apart to find the 3060 has committed sepuku and taken the X570 board with it.

From the looks of it the small power connector on the PCIe finger has melted through to the ground plane, if there was caps there they are also no more, made quite a mess of the fingers too and the slot on the motherboard was melted, it also toasted the BIOS battery and associated SMDs that sit next to the PCIe slot. (VRM is also next to the PCIe slot ...)

Haven't tested the CPU and Ram yet nor the PSU but considering the amount of power the GPU let lose and damage done I'm expecting PSU to have sacrificed itself stopping the power surge. The GPU was in use when it happened playing APEX so yeah .. it was quite the light and smoke show.

Im not expecting the CPU or ram to have survived the show but I wont know till I test them on another board.

Damn house now stinks of magic smoke.

That sucks big time. Melting power connectors have been a thing for a few years now.

It happens a lot with 4090s, a very costly magic smoke machine.

Not a PCIe power connector but the actual small power delivery finger part of the PCIe edge connector, made a mess of it and has burned it through to the ground plane of the GPU, also melted the smaller part of the PCIe slot.

I have a 4090 and so long as you make 100% sure the connector is fully plugged in and secure you are good to go. I got one of the better models that has a very solid support bracket built into the card but I still put a support in for the far end of the card as its freaking heavy. I also have a small utility that monitors the power draw of the GPU and can alert me if it starts transient spiking and drawing past its power limits, I find it amusing that nVidia allows it to do that since power limits are there for a reason.

Im going to be honest here .. I dont actually use the 4090 rig as my daily driver, I use a X299 rig with a Arc B580 in it. I found the 4090 rig simply pumps out too much heat if I run it 24/7 like I do my x299 machine.

So the 4090 spends most of its time turned off till I want to stream a game from it that requires the GPU grunt of the 4090 .. which isn't too many games. The B580 is actually a very solid GPU and handles nearly everything I throw at it while being quieter and producing less heat.

Perhaps I really am getting old since I now regret buying the 4090 as its simply overkill.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-05, 11:14:

Perhaps I really am getting old since I now regret buying the 4090 as its simply overkill.

nothing lost, you can always sell it

robertmo3 wrote on 2025-03-05, 11:48:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-05, 11:14:

Perhaps I really am getting old since I now regret buying the 4090 as its simply overkill.

nothing lost, you can always sell it

I could and right now I suspect I would get more for it than I originally paid for it since the 5090 is vaporware and nvidia balled the release up with hardware issues.

But knowing me I will likely hold on to it as itll be the last nvidia card I buy, I find the Intel GPUs to be really nice cards and I can see myself sticking with them, their GPU department could use the support.

I really want to see how the B580 performs under Linux, not even sure if Intel has official Linux drivers yet.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-05, 06:46:

Not bought today but a 3060ti and X570 motherboard combo I bought very recently just set itself on fire, took the poor thing apa […]
Show full quote

Not bought today but a 3060ti and X570 motherboard combo I bought very recently just set itself on fire, took the poor thing apart to find the 3060 has committed sepuku and taken the X570 board with it.

From the looks of it the small power connector on the PCIe finger has melted through to the ground plane, if there was caps there they are also no more, made quite a mess of the fingers too and the slot on the motherboard was melted, it also toasted the BIOS battery and associated SMDs that sit next to the PCIe slot. (VRM is also next to the PCIe slot ...)

Haven't tested the CPU and Ram yet nor the PSU but considering the amount of power the GPU let lose and damage done I'm expecting PSU to have sacrificed itself stopping the power surge. The GPU was in use when it happened playing APEX so yeah .. it was quite the light and smoke show.

Im not expecting the CPU or ram to have survived the show but I wont know till I test them on another board.

Damn house now stinks of magic smoke.

Update, Motherboard is toast ...zero signs of life, CPU is toast too but the Ram survived and has passed memtest86 just fine.

The PSU is also toast, not really worth trying to fix it either so its gone to the e-waste bin along with the motherboard, GPU and CPU.

4 x 500GB 2.5" - SATA 7200rpm
Never enough for data transfers

Got an acquaintance who says his games used to run nice on his 1080TI but given 3 years of game and windows updates "helping", things can get randomly stuttery now. So he's asking about "What can I upgrade to for cheap?" and gut feeling is to tell him that there's nothing much that will give him a noticeable upgrade that's less than $200 CDN and that's looking at used stuff.

BitWrangler wrote on Yesterday, 22:39:

Got an acquaintance who says his games used to run nice on his 1080TI but given 3 years of game and windows updates "helping", things can get randomly stuttery now. So he's asking about "What can I upgrade to for cheap?" and gut feeling is to tell him that there's nothing much that will give him a noticeable upgrade that's less than $200 CDN and that's looking at used stuff.

Yeah, GPU-wise there is very little that is worth upgrading to from a 1080 Ti unless he's got at least a few hundred bucks to spend. Part of the problem is that the 1080 Ti has 11GB of memory, and there are very few cards that are faster, decently priced AND have more memory. Heck, my 3080 only has 10GB. That said, in situations where VRAM isn't the limiting factor, even an 8GB 3060 Ti will be a sizeable upgrade over a 1080 Ti. If the price of a 3060 Ti is out of the question, then I wouldn't even bother with a GPU upgrade. Just wait it out. Ideally, something like a 4070 or 3080 would be good, but the price for those is going to be a lot higher unless he finds a smoking deal.

What are the rest of his specs? It's possible that something else is limiting his performance. It could even be software related, especially if he's had that OS install for quite a while. It might be worth just doing a fresh install on a spare SSD and then seeing if performance is any better. If that seems to help, then he can proceed with a full backup + reinstall of everything.

If he's got a really old or weak CPU, then getting a nice cheap AM5 setup is a great option these days. A Ryzen 5 7500F can be bought on Aliexpress (or other places like that) for under $140 US, and if he isn't trying to max out a 240Hz display in every game, a 7500F will likely be more than fast enough to eliminate CPU bottlenecks for several years. With some cheap DDR5 and whatever motherboard he can afford, it ends up being a surprisingly affordable setup.

Thanks, I'll check those things out when I next get over there. I think he's on a Ryzen 7 3rd gen and Samsung mSATA ~500gb. Think he reinstalled just before Christmas to try to make things better, and got rid of some niggles but issues remain.