I finally realized I was daisy chaining my PCIe power cables all wrong

Took me about 4 builds and a random Reddit comment to figure out that using two separate cables from the PSU instead of one cable with the pigtail actually matters. My RTX 3080 had been pulling 350 watts through a single daisy chain for 8 months and I never even thought about it. Anyone else make it way too long before catching this?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse_barnes372d agoMost Upvoted

and that's exactly the kind of thing that makes me wonder how many people are out there running stuff like that without ever knowing. I had a friend who built a whole mining rig with a single PSU cable daisy chained to like six cards and it somehow didn't catch fire for six months. he only figured it out when one of the connectors literally melted onto the card and killed two 5700 XTs. now he triple checks every cable before even plugging anything in. but hey at least your 3080 is still kicking right?

thomas_young2d ago

My buddy Kyle did something similar but with a server PSU he found on eBay for 40 bucks. He rigged it up to power three RX 580s with some hacked together wires and electrical tape, and we all told him it was a bad idea. Actually ran for like eight months before it started making this weird sizzling sound and popped a capacitor, scared the crap out of his roommate. He still claims it was a "learning experience" but now he just buys proper PSUs like a normal person lol. The funny part is he still has one of those melted wires sitting on his desk as a trophy to remind him not to be cheap.