# I melted my CPU power connector...



## pr0n Inspector (Apr 17, 2014)

So day before yesterday I was testing my 1090t at 4.2ghz and around 1.5v under load on this whimpy matx board I'm stuck using(long story), there was a nice puff of smelled burning plastics, I thought the magic smoke is out but the system kept on going!

Fast forward to today, I kept getting sudden hard reboots and soon it won't boot at all. I thought I must have killed the VRM or something so I took it all apart: except the cpu power connector. It's melted together and won't come off...

So in the end I had to cut the wires, desolder the socket and hardwire my psu to the board. The lead-free solder they used are f**king hard to melt. Not fun.

Lesson learned:  don't do heavy overclocking on a board that only has 4-pin cpu power... duh


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## Aquinus (Apr 17, 2014)

You're probably drawing way too much power for 4-pin CPU power. I wouldn't test your luck too much if I were you. I think this was a lesson learned though without too much lost. At least you didn't fry the CPU or the VRMs or something.


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## jjnissanpatfan (Apr 17, 2014)

I say nice job with the fix. Seeing how you repaired that, i do not think you will have a problem putting another connector on the power supply.


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## Athlon2K15 (Apr 17, 2014)

Its probably time to stop overclocking when shit starts melting.


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## Ja.KooLit (Apr 17, 2014)

damn. It makes me scared to OC more now.


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## RCoon (Apr 17, 2014)

night.fox said:


> damn. It makes me scared to OC more now.



As long as your VRM sink is larger than a chocolate wafer biscuit, you've got more than 4 phases made of cardboard chugging juice, and power being drawn from more than a 4pin, overclocking ain't so bad. Mayonnaise actually makes pretty good thermal paste too.


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## Ja.KooLit (Apr 17, 2014)

RCoon said:


> As long as your VRM sink is larger than a chocolate wafer biscuit, you've got more than 4 phases made of cardboard chugging juice, and power being drawn from more than a 4pin, overclocking ain't so bad. Mayonnaise actually makes pretty good thermal paste too.



your post makes me hungry.  kidding.


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## vega22 (Apr 17, 2014)

nice going dude 

that is pretty bad ass imo


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## Winston_008 (Apr 17, 2014)

lol this post made my day


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## ste2425 (Apr 17, 2014)

Very good job on the repair.


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## Kissamies (Apr 17, 2014)

I have my 2500K @ 4.5GHz 1.416V and the motherboard has a 4pin connector but I don't care. As well my old cheap AM3 motherboard has a 8pin connector but I'm pretty sure that 4pin would have been enough for that.


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## pr0n Inspector (Apr 17, 2014)

Thanks for the responses everyone.

In hindsight it's pretty dumb to push the board like this, it's just not designed for doing this, the kill-a-watt jumped up over 200 watts when it was running prime95 IIRC.
(it's a msi 890gxm, it was for a htpc built that never happened  so I ended up using it for a desktop)


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## buildzoid (Apr 17, 2014)

9700 Pro said:


> I have my 2500K @ 4.5GHz 1.416V and the motherboard has a 4pin connector but I don't care. As well my old cheap AM3 motherboard has a 8pin connector but I'm pretty sure that 4pin would have been enough for tI5at.


An i5 2500k pulls very little power even at 1.5v.


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## True Christian (Apr 17, 2014)

AthlonX2 said:


> Its probably time to stop overclocking when shit starts melting.



He got not 1 but 3 Thanks for the obvious?!?


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## Aquinus (Apr 17, 2014)

9700 Pro said:


> I have my 2500K @ 4.5GHz 1.416V and the motherboard has a 4pin connector but I don't care. As well my old cheap AM3 motherboard has a 8pin connector but I'm pretty sure that 4pin would have been enough for that.



Intel CPUs (sans skt2011 for select CPUs,) are known for drawing less current than AMD cpus. Most likely because of the manufacturing process (SOI vs HKMG) plus things like Intel's multi-gate transistors introduced in IVB. My Phenom II 940 used to overclock and draw more power than my 3820 does overclocked now. If I did a long burn-in session on my 940 drawing that much, I would have had the same problem. Despite the board I had at the time (M4N72-E) which had 8 phase power, I would have run into the same issue that @pr0n Inspector had since it too had a 4-pin EPS12v connector..

All in all, I don't think you've personally encountered an issue because you're using hardware that won't draw as much as a 1100t or 940 would.

@pr0n Inspector : You said the power usage jumped by 200-watts. What was it idling it? That's practically pulling 17A off of the EPS 12v connector which isn't unreasonable, but it is a lot of power draw. Since it melted on the connector, there was probably a semi-poor connection between both connectors and that bad connection (and resistance added because of it,) caused ohmic heating that made it melt. I would stress test again at a lower overclock and keep an eye on not just the temperature of the board and the VRMs, but of the EPS12V wires too. For chassis wiring each wire on the EPS12V (which should be 16 AWG) should be able to handle something like 20A per wire for chassis wiring (forgetting the PSUs capability), but keep in mind that any junctions where wires are soldered together or using a connector, overclocking and heat generation can cause damage. It would be a shame if it were to get so hot that solder would start flowing or wiring.


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## ne6togadno (Apr 17, 2014)

@Aquinus 


pr0n Inspector said:


> Thanks for the responses everyone.
> 
> In hindsight it's pretty dumb to push the board like this, it's just not designed for doing this, the kill-a-watt jumped up over *200 watts when it was running prime95 IIRC*.
> (it's a msi 890gxm, it was for a htpc built that never happened  so I ended up using it for a desktop)


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## rtwjunkie (Apr 17, 2014)

True Christian said:


> He got not 1 but 3 Thanks for the obvious?!?


 
No, he got thanks for an amusing post.


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## ste2425 (Apr 17, 2014)

True Christian said:


> He got not 1 but 3 Thanks for the obvious?!?


No, as stated, for how neat a job he did with the soldering.


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## pr0n Inspector (Apr 19, 2014)

Aquinus said:


> Intel CPUs (sans skt2011 for select CPUs,) are known for drawing less current than AMD cpus. Most likely because of the manufacturing process (SOI vs HKMG) plus things like Intel's multi-gate transistors introduced in IVB. My Phenom II 940 used to overclock and draw more power than my 3820 does overclocked now. If I did a long burn-in session on my 940 drawing that much, I would have had the same problem. Despite the board I had at the time (M4N72-E) which had 8 phase power, I would have run into the same issue that @pr0n Inspector had since it too had a 4-pin EPS12v connector..
> 
> All in all, I don't think you've personally encountered an issue because you're using hardware that won't draw as much as a 1100t or 940 would.
> 
> @pr0n Inspector : You said the power usage jumped by 200-watts. What was it idling it? That's practically pulling 17A off of the EPS 12v connector which isn't unreasonable, but it is a lot of power draw. Since it melted on the connector, there was probably a semi-poor connection between both connectors and that bad connection (and resistance added because of it,) caused ohmic heating that made it melt. I would stress test again at a lower overclock and keep an eye on not just the temperature of the board and the VRMs, but of the EPS12V wires too. For chassis wiring each wire on the EPS12V (which should be 16 AWG) should be able to handle something like 20A per wire for chassis wiring (forgetting the PSUs capability), but keep in mind that any junctions where wires are soldered together or using a connector, overclocking and heat generation can cause damage. It would be a shame if it were to get so hot that solder would start flowing or wiring.




The PSU(original TX-750) was a carry-over from an older machine, the connector "sleeves" that grab onto the pins might have been less tight than ideal due to repeated use(but only 10, 15 or so), I just never thought it would actually melt.
My watt meter measures everything on the power strip so I don't know how much the computer itself draws but I can tell how much it went up during load.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 19, 2014)

Nice repair, but make sure those wires aren't getting warm now, you don't want to end up melting the insulation off and causing a short.


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## remixedcat (Apr 21, 2014)

AthlonIX2 said:


> Its probably time to stop overclocking when shit starts melting.



People think I over clocked my to link wlan adapter because its got a melty mark and I never did that. 

Its melty mark awareness month.


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## TheBrainyOne (Apr 21, 2014)

Nice job you did there. I don't even dare to open my computer.


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