How To Spot Molex To SATA Adapters That Won't Catch Fire
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- čas přidán 20. 08. 2024
- In this video I show you how to identify the safe type of computer power adapters.
It happened to me: • My File Server Caught ...
I have a second channel:
/ @markfurneaux2659
Thank you for this. I've been using a Molex to 2x SATA connector for a few months and just recently found out that they can catch fire. I got all freaked out by it, and unfortunately the one I have does indeed use the molded type connectors. Luckily I was able to rearrange some components and reroute the PSU cables in such a way that eliminated the need for such an adapter.
Injection molding use high temperature and high pressure. That high pressure can melt the wire insulation. The high pressure can cause the injected plastic to push on the wire in a significant way. If for whatever reason the wires are pushed in a bit too much then it can then move closer under the high pressure soft plastic flow. The insulation melt, and the wire almost touch. With time, any stress in the metal will push the wire throught the plastic slowly, which can bring the wire closer together (had anything on plastic for a while and noticed a dent?). Once it get too close the plastic can't block the angry pixies and zap! Now you have an angry powersupply sending angry pixies down the wires to the arc "welder" and no good thing can come out of that nature improvised welder.
As for the crimped one, you could have lifted the plastic tabs on the connector and pulled out the wire. It would come with the sata pins. The connector is really a one piece hard plastic with holes from the back to front to guide the pins. Those holes look more like a tunel than some holes.
i got the crimped one, but it catches fire on the first try. the burned part is the cable not the connector. bolts of fire, and smokes everywhere from my rig, and sadly it damages my hdd. i got it cheap, 1 dollar for two molex-sata power extension. that should be a red flag from the start.
No if that was the case then all power supply will end up with same problem as well here my thought as they should have been per-tested at the factory and bad one are toss in a bin but in stead them destroying them with a shredder on site some else pick them out trash resold them back on market.
@@SHSPVR lol at tested. They test maybe one in a thousand if they even do. They will visually inspect some to make sure that the plastic is hot enought and that it flow well, and they make the needed adjustement so the injection is fine.
And not all psu use the same process. Not junk use crimped terminals with insert type housing. Some use spaced out injection which avoid the issue. And the cheap ones that do most likelly will fail before it happen anyway.
amazing mark. I had a desktop computer in a rack somewhere with less than ideal ventilation. it caught fire. I assumed it was just due to the poor airflow and promptly moved the system, however after watching your video and seeing that the melted plastic was at the SATA connector end, i'm convinced it was the sata to molex adapter.
Interesting... Guess I've been lucky for almost 20 years then...
Brah those are for shit PSU I use this on my branded PSU so yea
Thanks a bunch for clearing that up, I had a few in use in my media server which I took out after I watched your last video. They're back in now, as they're the 'better' type to use. I'll let you know if they catch fire :p
Clinton Mattler Hi. Did they ever catch fire?
Any fire yet?
@@tatenda.mawoneke2864 He can't answer. His server caught fire.
@@heathchapman7528 Dead from the fire I guess
RIP
Oh shit, better check mine!
EDIT: It turned out to be one of the flammable ones in my retro computer! Everything in there is freaking expensive, got that shit changed right away.
Retro computer with sata?
Erwin Holland The 775i65g motherboard has an option for IDE emulation built in, so you can use 2 sata devices however the 2nd IDE port will be unusable. Good for me considering I can't find a good IDE harddrive anymore.
I have a couple of 50gig and 75gig IDE drives never been opened lmao
MrDanderskoff Oh lucky, I can only find used ones.
Kippy Kip If they're not too small I could sell a couple of them
The thing I notice is that the melting seems to occur with the 12V line, never the 5V.
Given that some of the higher-end, single-rail PSUs are rated for almost 100 amps... in some ways, I'm not surprised the overcurrent protection doesn't trip, at least not until it's far too late.
That's it. I'm going through my bin of connectors and going through all my servers to see if they are in there! May have saved my bacon! Really appreciate it
I remember watching this video a few months ago and thinking that I wouldn't buy an molded sata connectors. I actually forgot that I had a sata to 2 sata connectors (I was using it as an extender to reach one of my drives) I just watched it today and I remembered the connector and went to check it. Turns out it was a molded connector. I'm surprised it didn't set on fire by now. I switched it out for a monoprice molex to sata that I had lying around. Thanks dude
The plugs with the hard plastic and internal dividers is made so that each wire, having been attached to the connector part, is then crimped to the connector around the insulation. The connector has a weakly sprung barb that clicks into the hard plastic to prevent the wire from being removed in service.
When the connector is flipped over, you can see the bright metal of the connector and the barb in place.
This crimping method is used in the clear Molex plugs to retain the copper conductors of each wire.
Arcing and the resultant heat damage usually occurs when a conductor joint or a short circuit becomes resistive; i.e. not a dead short, but an intermittent sparking or flash over.
Most of the 3.5" SATA HDD are rated thus: 5 VDC : 0.65 A (650 mA) DC and 12 VDC : 0.5 A (500 mA) DC, so it is hard to imagine why the conductors become a resistive short circuit unless, as Mark suggests, the molding process is flawed.
To test the effectiveness of the molding process, the wires and connector should be subjected to a High Voltage (HV) test via a "Mega" to check the insulation resistance between the wires and the connector; i.e.
(1) the HV is applied between the wires joined together and the plastic;
(2) the HV is applied between each individual wire to each adjacent wire to check the internal separation and internal insulation.
Had one of these molded sata adapters start a fire in a server several years back, before I learned about any issues they had. The adapter was connected to a drive near the top of the case, and when the connector started burning it dripped burning plastic down onto a large removable tray multi-disk unit. The plastic backplate on that started burning and it really took off. Set off the fire alarm, but the server was still running when I got to it. I was lucky and no hardware was lost, besides some charring.
Thank you for this video, brother. I have been trying to power some SATA drives that are having what I can only describe as the "Pin 3 problem." I need these adapters to get my drives to work, and my friend pointed me at this video. I would never have known. This is my first server I ever built, and any knowledge arms me with the ability to maybe finally finish the darn thing. Thank you. You have put me on a good path with my drives.
Last computer I built was pre-sata. Just letting you know that your video is still relevant. Thank you!
Great video! I was just building a system, tempted to use a bunch of these adapters. I checked, and of course, half the adapters I had were the "bad" ones. Opted to only use a couple good ones and get another sata power cable for the modular PSU instead of the molex cable.
There is a large difference between the current draw required to shut down the power supply and the safe carrying capacity of the individual connectors and their wires (#18? #22 wire?). This means there is a good range of partial shorts that can smoulder and cause a fire but not trip the power supply.
I bought my adapter without any research, and mine turned out to be the best in this video. I'm lucky
You said that the MOLEX end is always fine. Well, I had a cable a few days ago where the manufacturers actually managed to fuck that up too. The plastic molding was SO BAD, that you were able to plug the female end into the male end either way and not even notice it was plugged in the wrong way. It killed the second one of my 3 drive RAIDZ1 array, so I lost my data. Watch out for that too!
wait, you are on raidz1, one drive shouldn't lose you data.
THANK YOU so much! I had flames coming out of my computer yesterday from the molded molex to SATA that you are warning about.
The kind of adapters that are being recommended in this video are not used for powered risers. They are used for powering sata drives from a molex. We never heard of sata connectors melting until powered risers came out. Powering risers through a sata connector is an improper application because it draws too many amps. Add to that the fact that injection molded connectors may not provide proper pin tension to some of the terminals sometimes due to very poor quality control and their design being constructed with weak flexible rubbery type material. When there is not enough pin tension the temperature will increase on that terminal due to the extra resistance caused by the inadequate connection. When that happens whatever the rubber/plastic crap these connectors are made from gets even more flexible and allows the already loose connector to get looser, increasing resistance further and in turn producing enough heat to the point of melting.
So if I use, for example, molded sata extenders (sata to sata power cable) I don't actually risk having my drives damaged? There's so much contradictory info, I no longer know if I should replace them asap or not
Thank you very much for your advises. I found your video investigating on a problem that occurred yesterday to my NAS. A SATA power cable for a secondary disk was partially melted without apparent reason and I became aware of it because of the bad smell of burned plastic spread around. Since it was a loose cable with no disk connected and almost in touch with the top surface of primary disk I presumed that the disk became overheated and melted the cable. The top label of the disk was browned by heat. The disk did not spin anymore, so I opened it to check for any sign of burnt but I found nothing. So I focused back to the cable and thank to your explaination I found the real cause of my issue.
You *CAN* fuck up a Molex connector. The pins get loose in the housing or even break off the wire completely, if you have low-quality pins, low-quality housings, or cold-solder joints on the pins.
Great video and explanation, this just happened to one of my SATA cables, scared the shit out of me. This needs to be a recall!
Thank you for bringing awareness about this. As a new pc builder, I had no idea.
Question, is this limited to just molex->sata power adapters, or any sata power adapter in general?
Only asking because I have a 3rd party fan controller that is powered off sata cable (it's a 3 or 4 pin fan cable->sata). The sata power head looks like it is molded as well, but it's just a single wire going into the header and not individual wires.
Is it a reputable brand?
I had one of these on my file server computer which caught fire. Luckily, I was home at the time and smelled it burning. I was also able to save the SSD. My analysis indicates that there are two causes of this problem. Cause number one is that some connectors are probably manufactured with insufficient precision. Thus, the conductors on the drive may fall in-between two of the conductors on the connector and at a random time an arc will form, shorting them out. Cause number two, is that I also believe this is a design flaw in the SATA power connector. The engineers are really getting lazy now with some of their designs and the fact is they should not really have put the opposing power rails so close to each other! Today, I will only use SATA power cables that come with my power supplies. This has forced me to disconnect some DVD drives so that I can power all of the SSDs and Hard Drives.
man, i watched few of your videos, but this was the reason i subscribed you
thanks for saving my pc :D
Thanks for sharing this video with us. Saw that this same thing happened later on your FileServer video. Thanks for sharing.
Good Job bro making this video...I just ordered a 1TB HDD and planning to add another sata power connector..
the timing of finding this video is really really great because I have those two connectors and for me I would have
chosen those that would caught fire just by the look of it being made...
Really Thanks!...
Thank you, I canceled an order and changed to the better type and even saved $.50 each.
I think the process goes like this:
1. A "bad apple" connector with too much solder/wrongly stripped insulation/abnormally thin wire drifts together in molding process
2. During use, the cables inside gets broken, but since it's still connected it will continue to work somewhat
3. After sufficient amount of dead strands occur, the wire won't be able to stand the power consumption of whatever is connected to it
4. The wire heats up, melting plastic and insulation
5. The power wire in close proximity will also start to melt and drift towards to the fault
6. Arcing occurs, effectively making carbon deposits which aid in creating more heat
7. As the wire heats up, the resistance of insulation drops significantly
8. Power supply doesn't shut off because it's well under current limit (while the connector is going up in flames), effectively welding two wires together
9. Wire melts, completely wrecking entire connector and whatever is connected to it
10. Power supply THEN realizes something is wrong and shuts off
Very informative,
I've had these things burn on me before and destroyed my sata controller, I avoid molex to sata connectors like the plague whenever possible.
I have had several of these molex to sata adapters melt and burn up. My experience with them was not the insulated leads shorting out and giving trouble, it was the cheap contacts in the sata connecters. The contacts are too thin and heat up. when they heat they warp and twist sideways. When they bend and twist toward each other instead of away from each other they sometimes touch each other and short out. When two contacts of opposite polarity touch each other, you have a short circuit. This overloads the supply leads which they themselves very small gauge wires (should be larger gauge) and therefore turning red hot and melting the insulation off the wires. Thereupon the bare wires themselves short out and further compound the problem. The problem begins with the contacts and not the wires themselves.
Very interesting video. I have now removed All the moulded adapters from my computer & connected directly to the drives, using the Sata plugs direct from the PSU, which do have the orange 3.3v lead, which I understood could stop the drives from powering up with some Sata drives, as I have recently replaced the old mechanical drives with SSD, this no longer appears to be a problem.
Yup, just had one ignite - crazy! The adapter was a duel sata to molex. The wiring was way too small a gauge to handle the power. I've never had a problem with heavier gauge wiring with these connectors. I thought it strange when I first looked at it, I should have went with my instincts. Fortunately I caught it immediately.
I had one like the "good" type burn out on me today, I'd just say never use a molex to sata adapter(If you can avoid it) xD They're all shit and should never be used.
So yeah, totally agree with you man, thanks for the video.
Time to make sure my desktop is still alive. ;)
Would a sata power female to two females be safer? I need to add an ssd to my brother's sff pc.
Yes those adapters suck i pluged a ssd in it it worked for few days than once my pc froze and it never booted with the ssd .Luckaly i didnt have important data on the ssd
Super helpful!
Thanks so much.
I was guilty of using these, thankfully not for long, went and checked mine out and thankfully they're the okay ones.
Starts at 02:00, otherwise good video 👍
Over CUrrent Protection doesn't work in many many cases...
Because it's either not implemented in the PSU at all (see the protection chips and the spec sheets. too many PSUs have just an 8pin IC that doesn't have OCP anywhere)...
Or just because it's set so high, that it's not reliable...
On the minor rails we talk about 20A minimum. And on some units like EVGA GS-Series, you don't have OCP on the minor rails. If you overload this unit, one of the DC-DC modules might burn...
Interesting.... I've been using 3 of the "good" adapters for the longest time now. They came with motherboards I've used in the past, back when when they still had both IDE and SATA.... or maybe they came with some SATA drives i bought in the past (We're talking about SATA I and SATA II here)... its been too long.
I found one of the "bad adapters" in a box... its probably as old as my other adapters but I havent been using it all this time for no particular reason really before watching this video. Such a good coincidence I lucked out!
Haha mine caught on fire just yesterday. I saw the whole thing and quickly pulled power plug when I saw a ball of yellow light inside my case 😱. It scared the hell out of me. Luckily SSD was ok. It has caught on fire 🔥 before killing DVD drive that I never used lol 🤣. Pretty sure they were the same cheap Chinese ones. I am gonna power SSD directly now.
You, have gained a subscriber!
In my opinion the conductor used is underrated .if the conductor is underrated tendency the conductor heats up and melts the insulation.another reason also is loss connection has a bigger chance of arching.
I think it has more to do with contact resistance, like you said the some of the molded type adapters let the cables move around and when there's a load through that adapter, and the wire isn't connected too well to the pin, the contact resistance increases making the thing hotter and hotter until it catches fire
Do I have to worry about my turning indicator indicates failure? Because the bulbs are working, it is high resistance. in hot weather it sometimes clicks normal.
A gentle belt sanding could reveal at least a bit of the mystery .... either way thanks for sharing
This literally happened to me this morning on my rig. The molex to SATA connector I got from Microcenter failed and literally slagged itself.
From my experience building PC more than decades, often the Molex connector that give me problem. The internal can become split or getting closer to next pin. I’ve seen it shortened and smoked. From my investigation, molex connector is the culprit. It should have terminal separation between each pin to avoid short circuit
I had a machine that was crashing a lot and couldn't figure out why. I thought it might have been one of the adapters so I switched them out. The type I switched out was the type that you said can catch fire. Since I switch them out it hasn't crashed once, so I wonder if that type also cause stability issues.
thank you mark. I will be more vigilant when I use a molex to sata adapter
thank you for the info i personalty use the blade ones as i make my own and solder the wires after i push them into the blades of the sata connector i looked though my pile and all of them are the injection mould type cut them up and put in to garbage keep up the awesome vids sir
Thank you. You safe my computer.
Yeah, I just had that happen and it WASN'T a cheap molded adapter at all, came with my corsair PSU. It didn't exactly go up in flames, but only because the PSU shut down quickly. There was a tiny flame and a lot of smoke. The PSU and everything else seem fine, but I have a fried SSD now. Thank god for backups 😉. Now I'm not sure what cable to use as a replacement considering this wasn't a cheap one.
The plastic which holds this wires actually started melting, slowly, slowly, and the heat rise as much as the plastic melts, because of the temperature wires which inside in these SATA cables gets kind of sold which make power cable to not throw all the electricity but raise the temperature in such which causes the fire.
Though it's not always that it will catch fire, sometimes it just melts...so badly
So, this problem is clearly dangerous, testable, and probably fixable by design. How has this avoided the scrutiny of standards organizations (IEC?) or been allowed to remain legal? This danger would be illegal for most consumer electronic devices, yet every day consumers (like me) can easily buy and install this dangerous POS. Seriously, it can't be difficult to redesign this in a safe way, and most consumers would rather pay a few extra dollars to protect their equipment and selves from a fire hazard IF they are aware of the danger. So, I'd like to see dangerous crap like this regulated out of existence.
Nice. Really informative and fire preventive
Is it the same story with the male sata to molex, I noticed you were just showing female to female adapters in the video? Thanks for the content, appreciate you.
I found out from work that a large number of molex connectors are becoming obsolete. I believe the last time buy is this year from molex and about a few years after that you will not be able to buy them anymore from a reseller.
I have had one of those molded "bad adapters" for a year now and I got it from an old used Core 2 Duo PC I got at a FLEA Market (I know very well how horrifying that sounds) but it never did that, even though i only used it for my ODD. Now i got my SSD (finally) and I switched to an adapter like the "good" ones you have. I guess im going to be safe
I just bought a pair for less than two dollars on eBay as that was the only part missing to my side and when hooking it up to my laptop it wasn’t even 90 seconds and I was already smelling something burning with a better rubber in it and I noticed my hard drive was smoking a bit, and I am plugged it as quickly as I could. I hope I didn’t destroy the hard drive.
the exact type you showed in the video caused 3 fire incidents within 6 weeks period. all bought at the same time.
Excellent analysis
Electrical "arch" as an initiator is very VERY unlikely without the cables actually touching or unless there's gross over voltage situation that breaks the dielectric of the plastic.
What most likely happens is a bad contact (either a bad crimp/solder in the connector itself or between the connector pins and the device input pins).
The latter is very likely since looking at the example pictures the heat source has been very close to the device pins, thus it's unlikely that crimping/soldering has been done badly and the bad contact happens after it.
That point then has larger resistance than it should, thus it starts to heat up from the current, increasing the resistance, which makes it heat up more and ultimately it'll either find equilibrium or it'll start to melt the plastics and then the contacts might start to move around and ultimately touch, which creates either a short circuit or something very close to it
If it's not pure short circuit, the reason might be that melting plastic starts to carbonize, and carbon is not pure insulator and power-supply starts pumping more current to that resistance, which heats it up more and since power-supplies can deliver hundreds of watts before even realizing there's anything wrong, that's enough to even start a fire or at least get stuff really smoking etc.
So yeah, cheap connectors together with the fact that SATA power connector is very very easy to insert badly or it can work itself loose easily from thermal cycles and vibration etc. when people move their computers and heavy cable bundles pull on the connectors.
Very good PSA about this issue. Got to go check out my file servers now!
do you guys know where could i buy this adapter? every offert i see is with adapters that catch fire
I hadn't heard about these many thanks for the heads up, time to check if i have any in use
Thank you for taking your time and explain.
Thank you Mark. Its a great video / great article
That's helpful, I kind of don't want my computer to catch fire.
Thanks for the advice, I never heard of this, I just put one of the bad ones in my friends computer.
Oh, wow. I thought I was just really unlucky when I had one of these ignite.
I use an insulation tester on my cables, that's a good way to find bad ones.
Forget about any sata cable for gpu they are rated for only 4.5 amp and a single 1080 ti can draw more than that by the riser. Use only 4 pin moles or 6 pin molex directly in the riser, no adapter!
thank you for this vid, this is an important psa
Do you have a suggested place to purchase these? Whether they are female/male SATA or 4 pin Molex to SATA
I have personally had two of the Molex adaptors that you recommend to avoid melt in about a 1 to 2 year period. Neither resulted in the PSU switching off (and I use good PSUs). I only noticed when I came back into my computer room to investigate the awful smell. A quick research on the internet seems to concur with your recommendations. Thank you for the video.
FML... Bought one and just got it today and its the Molex to SATA Adapter... I bought it for My H80I Liquid Cooler
Any links to the good cables.... Such sources would be good to 'push' so that we get quality/safe cables?
Thanks for the knowledge dude !
After checking my PC I discovered my DVD drive was using a vulnerable Molex to SATA cable. Immediately removed it, as well as the Molex cable from my computer's power supply, and connected everything with SATA power directly instead.
Spontaneous Connector Combustion
Very informative video. Thank you boy
Thanks for the info, and im with Jonathan down there. Something Matte would be cool
Thanks for the informative video!
Thank you for the information, I learned something
Shit. Now i must look thru my cable collection! Thank you!
very informative thanks for sharing your experience
Thanks for letting us know about this.
.... john
Just had one of these plastic injection mold based ones burn up on me without even being plugged in to a drive
a problem in a sata connectors inside in connection between wire and metal connector. Its too weak in all sata connectors.So Sata only can used with low power consumption devices: hdd, ssd, dvd , blu ray drivers and others. It have some differense between sata and molex , it in connection inside a connector, and in molex its better. So molex if it well you can use for videocards and other devices which can need more power then ssd for example.
i had one start to burn in my main rig. i luckily had just turned it on after installing it, and so i caught it in time
This is exactly what happend to my computer I had these crappy adapters, lucky i caught it in time i had to replace the psu and get rid of these cables
Idk, i have used one of the molded connectors, but it might be because it was an ssd and ssds draw less power
Acetate for the win?
Hi Mark, how do you attach the molex connectors? Should I be matching the yellow cable on the adapter to the yellow cable coming from the power supply? I really should have looked at the adapter before detaching it from the power supply. The failure I believe is truly on my part. :(
Awesome video. Thanks!
what about SATA (male) to Molex? all the SATA to molex looks molded from the outside, haven't seen male ones that are not molded like some Molex to SATA F.
Excellent video, subbed :)
We're dealing with something similar on the Nvidia 40 series GPUs with PCIe 5.0 adapters catching fire.
Better check mine, because if mine fail, it's taking my whole house with it. I have the side panel off and on this bin where the side with no side panel is shoved up to my desk.
Update: yup, injection mold style, but goes into DVD drive which for the most part is surrounded by metal and would only take out my DVD drive and motherboard wiring loom. its a older pc, it can die if it wants.
I just had this exact burned wire adapter yesterday (4 pin Molex to Sata) it even melted the pcie 6pin wires that it was next to. About 2 months ago I had a power supply that actually made a big bang and sparks flew with smoke and fire that too I had never seen that guess my luck is running out.
There are sata to sata power cables that have connectors which fit your description for a "bad" molex to sata adapter.
Are these dangerous? I am asking because even thought everyone is talking about molex to sata catching fire, since the culprit isn't the molex side but the sata side then the sata to sata power cable should also be unsafe.
Thanks for the heads up!