Folding Forum

Has anyone's rig ever caught fire while folding? This new-found hobby has really put my desktops' cooling to the test. One desktop is silent as a mouse, the other sounds like a miniature jet engine.

I want to run both my desktops F@H 24/7 but I fear a fire may break out. The tower w/ Gtx 980 stays under 66C both CPU/GPU but the other tower w/ Intel i7 & Gtx 780Ti probably has broken sensors because it's always saying CPU is at 85C and the GPU's 74C. I put my hand on the case and vents and feels warm but not scorching hot. The vent from the 780 video card is where most of the heat is.

PSU:
CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX 650W (6 years old)
Sentey® Power Supply 750 Watts (5 Months old)
Both 80 Plus Bronze PSU's so I'm hoping they're well built with thermal fail-safes.

I run "medium" on the client. If a fire were to start, I would think the PSU or that 780Ti would be the culprit. Anyone here been risking it successfully at 74C-85C for years?

Both CPUs and GPUs are designed to protect themselves from damage if your computer's cooling system fails (which includes heat-sinks getting clogged with dust or somebody putting their computer in a tightly closed area) Even if there's some hardware failure, it's unlikely it would get hot enough to start a fire.

I'd check the "miniature jet engine," though. Fans often get very noisy if their bearings are about to fail -- particularly if it's a really cheap fan.

Any electronic device can catch fire (hoverboards, laptop batteries). But computers are designed to shut down at the first sign of a problem. I have been running FAH on computers for more than 10 years. Never had one catch fire, but then I am selective in my hardware purchases. Also consider that my last tube TV died a year ago, it shot sparks out the top, but no fire. YMMV, so be sure to change the battery in your smoke alarm.

There may be a temperature setting in the motherboard BIOS that you can use also. In my Ivy Bridge Z77 and Haswell Z87/97 boards you can change the temperature at which the motherboard shuts down. As I recall, it uses the sensor on the CPU, or else a chip on the motherboard. I normally set it to 85 degrees C, which is safe enough.

Thanks for the responses. I will run the good PC 24/7, and on the older PC set the fold to 'Light' whenever I'm not at home. I can't trust the sensors on that one, it's always 85C/74C no matter how hard or light I run the CPU/GPU.

The only real dangerous thing in a computer is a bad PSU (does anyone remember Heden or Advance brands ?). These infamous 500W PSUs not even able to deliver 250W that would blow (or catch fire) at full load because of the lack of decent protections (over current or over voltage) ...

As long as everything is done correctly on your electrical system, and that you use good pieces of hardware, the risks are low.

I had a kill-o-watt melting ... Actually the cable into it. Though it was rated as 15VA and I'm sure it was around 10VA; it just melted one pin. it was the time I reduced from 3 GPU to 1.5 GPU in my main rig.
Don't test the upper limits of the specs (power cables and fuse)

I've had a Seasonic 860 watt Platinum-rated power supply fail, melting (more like welding) a modular PCIe GPU cable to the power supply. Upon closer inspection, it does appear a small fire was present for some period of time at the point where it melted, since there was soot around the connector and up the side of the power supply. Surprisingly, it would still boot the computer and would run ok, but as soon as the GPU kicked in the system would restart itself. It took some investigation to figure it out and and I was shocked (ha ha) to determine the cause. Anyway, I have since decided to go with power supplies with a rating of 1,200 watts or more and now stick with EVGA and Corsair. To be fair to Seasonic, half of my systems use their power supplies (except for this one) they've been extremely reliable. So, yes, a fire could potentially occur, but the risk is extremely low in terms of the PC catching on fire, and even lower if you extrapolate to catching something near the PC on fire -- unless you routinely store kindling wood and matches on top of your rig.

Agreed. While modular PSUs are great to clean up the insides of a PC case, every extra connection introduces the problem of a faulty or loose connector which can smoke itself. Like the PowerWatt above, being an extra inline connection.

But it's not enough of a problem to send me back to all hardwired PSUs.

I've been running F@H for 6-7 years now and aside from holidays my machine(s) run 24/7. I've only had 1 PSU go bad on me, a corsair and that was graceful enough to shut down, when I tried to reboot the machine it sparked, popped and never started again - no damage to any other components. I use corsair and seasonic now, used to have an antec but that died one day in my main daily use non folding rig

Yes there is a small risk but you leave your fridge/freezer on 24/7, and the tv will be in standby mode, and the broadband router will be on etc.

Keep your systems clean, check the fans so that they are working, don't block the vents and you should be OK.

As others mention, when Lightning strikes I have had Power Supplies fry themselves, I once had a printer that sent 120 VAC to the parallel port when it was out of paper, but in 35 years I have not had a computer catch fire from the motherboard/CPU.