Spark when replacing PSU

[rinaldo00]

My fully modular top power power bird PSU died so I went to Microcenter to replace it.

The tech guy there recommended a Corsair HX 1050 power supply to replace it, It was on sale and Hardocp gave it a silver award so I bought it. When I got home I saw that it was not fully modual, but I figured I could get it to work. I removed everything (inclkuding HDs) and wanted to put things together in small steps so all I did was attach the main ATX cable to my motherboard, put power to the CPU connector and attached two PCIE cables to my GTX 680. I turned it on and everything worked. The BIOS told me no HD was detected and then it entered a shell mode (which I have never seen before)

I was then ready to connect power to the SATA power connector and here is when I got confused. I am tryiung to connect to my SATA power on my motherboard (P67A-GD65) but that is a 6+2 connector and the Corsair port that islabelled for SATA is a 4+4, the only 6+2 ports on the corsair psu are labelled pcie.

I called the microcenter tech support and he told me either port should work, just use the cable that fits the motherboard socket and plug the other end into the PSU, even if the port on the PSU is labelled PCIE it should be fine.

I put in my main boot drive but when I turned on the OC the BIOS said no HD detected, said no bootmanager, and wanted me to attach a bootable device. Then I did somethimng really stupid, I put in my other 3 HDs (4 total) and turned on the PC. Next thuing that happens is I hear a spark. Luckily I had my hand on the power button and shut down the PC immediately. Could having 4 HDs on that PCIE power cable have drawn too much current? Was the tech guy wrong about the PCIE and SATA ports on the PSU being the same?

I really don't know what to try next.

EDIT 1 HD is shot, it doies not even spin up. Will test the others Saturday.

 

[Dangman]

Wait, what SATA power are you talking about?

The 4+4 is the CPU power/EPS12V/ATX12V connector.
PCI-E is PCI-E. They should not be compatible unless you really forced the connectors in.

 

[larrymoencurly]

Is it possible to insert the wrong connector into the wrong socket, especially if the connector doesn't have all the pins?

Here are pinouts of PCI-E and ATX 12V connectors:

If you're lucky, an IC protector shorted and a fuse popped on that HD to prevent further damage, so you may be able to recover the data by replacing the fuse and removing the IC protector (but it's better to also replace the IC protector). With many HDs those components are on the flip side of the circuit board.

 

[rinaldo00]

Sorry for my late reply, family health issuses took over. I hope you will see this.

Below is a picture of my two PSUs, the top picture is my old PSU, a Topower PowerBird 1100W the bottom picture is the replacement, a Corsair HX 1050.

I used to have my SATA daughter boad plugged into the 12v3 SATA/IDE connector on the Topower, but I plugged it into the blue 6+2 PCI-E and it sparked.

 

[Dangman]

I used to have my SATA daughter boad plugged into the 12v3 SATA/IDE connector on the Topower, but I plugged it into the blue 6+2 PCI-E and it sparked.

Did you reuse the same modular cables from the Topower with the Corsair? And what SATA daughter board card are you talking about?

 

[rinaldo00]

Did you reuse the same modular cables from the Topower with the Corsair?

Yes

And what SATA daughter board card are you talking about?

Here is where my problem really lies, I just realized it today. It is attached to the case and it allows me to just push my HDs into it, just hot swapping, it was a featue reviewers loved. The cable from the PSU goes into it. It is called the Blackbird Panel, so it must be a custom part for my HP Blackbird Gaming PC

 

[Elledan]

It is safe to assume that modular cables provided with one modular PSU are incompatible with another PSU, even within the same brand. Corsair PSUs for example have at least two or three different layouts on their modular cables.

Using the wrong modular cable is likely to lead to a short-circuit or worse.

 

[Dangman]

Yes

It's pretty much what Elledan said: Modular cables are NOT interchangeable with one another. They may physically fit but the pinout are different. As such, the spark and damaged hard drives you saw was more than likely due to you reusing the cables.

So remove the cables and actually use the ones that came with the Corsair to avoid more issues. Hopefully it was just the hard drives that died and none of the rest of the PC was damaged.

Here is where my problem really lies, I just realized it today. It is attached to the case and it allows me to just push my HDs into it, just hot swapping, it was a featue reviewers loved. The cable from the PSU goes into it. It is called the Blackbird Panel, so it must be a custom part for my HP Blackbird Gaming PC

Gotcha. Is it being powered by a molex connector?

 

[rinaldo00]

It's pretty much what Elledan said: Modular cables are NOT interchangeable with one another. They may physically fit but the pinout are different. As such, the spark and damaged hard drives you saw was more than likely due to you reusing the cables.

Well, I did call Corsair tech support and the guy said if the cables fit you should be fine -sigh-

So remove the cables and actually use the ones that came with the Corsair to avoid more issues.

Apparently not. Now that I am FINALLY doing research on this it looks like the old cable WAS proprietary. Here is some info I found

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Deskto...kbird-SATA-backplane-to-a-new-PSU/td-p/721249

Hopefully it was just the hard drives that died and none of the rest of the PC was damaged.

Actually I would have rather fried ALL my PC except the HDs. PC parts only cost money, hard drives cost memories.

 

[Tsumi]

If you fried the hard drives, it was likely only the logic boards that were fried. In that case, the data is still recoverable from the disks, at the expense of money, of course.

 

[silkstone]

"I was then ready to connect power to the SATA power connector and here is when I got confused. I am tryiung to connect to my SATA power on my motherboard (P67A-GD65) but that is a 6+2 connector and the Corsair port that islabelled for SATA is a 4+4, the only 6+2 ports on the corsair psu are labelled pcie."

First of all, the connectors on the mobo are for the CPU 4+4. The sata (and molex) power is run directly from your PSU.

From memory, the whole top row of the 8-pin vga is +12v (+1 sensor) and the whole bottom row is GND (+1 sensor)

SATA power connectors have a 5 V connection. And so it seems quite likely that by plugging in the (old) sata power cable (that would only fit into the sata connector on your old psu), into the vga power connection of the new psu (where is does fit!!), you were running one of the 5 V lines at either 12 V or GND.

In short - the cables between the two PSUs ARE NOT interchangeable and you have most likely blown up your HDDs.

Whether your old PSU pin cables were propriety or not is not the issue. The issue is that you ran +12 V out on a +5 V line. the Corsair sata pin out is completely different.

2 lessons to be learnt from this. #1 - take your time and read instructions and #2 always keep a backup of your most important data.

You can send the disks to recovery specialists and they will be able to recover some of your stuff, but it will be expensive.

Sorry, if this wasn't the answer you were looking for, but it seems that you are SOOL

 

[rinaldo00]

2 lessons to be learnt from this. #1 - take your time and read instructions

Well, I did call Corsair tech support and the tech told me if the cables fit I should be all right

You can send the disks to recovery specialists and they will be able to recover some of your stuff, but it will be expensive.

I might just try to replace the circuit board on he HD with the circuit board from the same model from an old HD. It should work.

 

[silkstone]

Well, I did call Corsair tech support and the tech told me if the cables fit I should be all right

He would/should have said that if the cables from the corsair unit fit, then it would work. I hope he didn't tell you this before you tried it. If he did, did you make it clear that you were trying non-corsair cables?
I've heard bad things about Corsair support before, they really do need to start getting their act together. You ought to write a strongly worded complaint if he gave you instructions that caused your HDDs to blow.
The old cables will not work, VGA power out is 12 V. Sata is 12V and 5 V.

The motor in the HDD runs off 12 V and the logic board off the 5 V one.

I might just try to replace the circuit board on he HD with the circuit board from the same model from an old HD. It should work.

It has a possibility of working, but if your HDDs are newish, it is unlikely to. Even with identical models, many of the logic boards are slightly different.

 

[BinarySynapse]

He would/should have said that if the cables from the corsair unit fit, then it would work.
The old cables will not work, VGA power out is 12 V. Sata is 12V and 5 V.

The motor in the HDD runs off 12 V and the logic board off the 5 V one.



It has a possibility of working, but if your HDDs are newish, it is unlikely to. Even with identical models, many of the logic boards are slightly different.

SATA also has a 3.3v line as well, but I don't know if any desktop drives have started using it yet.

As for the hard drives, get a logic board that has the exact same revision number, and if possible the same firmware version. That's still not guaranteed to work, but at the point you have nothing to lose but time and money.

There's a chance that you blew out the read/write heads with your mishap, in which case, only a professional recovery service will be able to do anything for you.

EDIT: Since you say money is not a concern for you, I'd call up and compare a few data recovery specialists instead of risking any more problems by doing it yourself.

 

[silkstone]

Yes, i didn't think it was worth mentioning the 3.3V line as, afaik, it isn't connected to anything in platter type HDDs and so connecting 12 V to the 3.3v is unlikely to blow anything (i guess).

 

[rinaldo00]

He would/should have said that if the cables from the corsair unit fit, then it would work. I hope he didn't tell you this before you tried it. If he did, did you make it clear that you were trying non-corsair cables?

Yes and Yes. I told him I was replacing a fully modular Topower PSU with this semi modular Corsair and I was worried that the old cable that was powering my SATA drives would only fit in the blue port labelled PCI-E. I asked could that possibly work and he said if the cables fit you should be fine.

AFTER I had the trouble I called Corsair back, this time I gave more detail, I told the tech this was going into a HP Blackbird and he looked up the HP specs and told me the PSU would not work with it.

 

[Tsumi]

It has absolutely nothing to do with what you were using it in, and everything to do with the techs not knowing what they were talking about.

Because even within the Corsair lineup, HX modular cables will not work with AX power supplies, and even the AX650-850 cables will not work with the AX1200.