News EVGA power supply allegedly kills 22TB of customer storage — revised model from RMA had a different pin layout and killed all SATA-powered devices

[Admin]

EVGA accidentally blew up 22TB of customer storage after it failed to ship updated cables with a power supply the customer RMAed.

EVGA power supply allegedly kills 22TB of customer storage — revised model from RMA had a different pin layout and killed all SATA-powered devices : Read more

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

 

[Rexer]

Wow. That's too bad. I wish I had words of advice or information on how to recover from such episodes of life but I have none. I know sometimes wrong hapens and the loses are absolutely hair pulling. Worse, is when you entrusted yourself with other people's personal effects or your own such as archive pictures, documents, court evidence and family adresses. Yeah, in bitterness, I've walked alone.

 

[artk2219]

I do hope he had backups, but it is kind of crummy that they sent him a unit without the proper cables, then fail to mention the pin out has changed and that he needs new cables. I wonder how many people have fried equipment related to changes like this. Things tend to not like like it when 12v goes to where 5v, 3.3v, or ground should be.

 

[BillyBuerger]

The fact that PSU companies all came up with their own pinouts for modular PSUs and then didn't even follow their own pinouts on different models of their own products has always been stupid. It's way to easy for this to happen. I made a simialr mistake between my Seasonic and Corasir PSUs. But I was lucky that the OCP prevented the unit from turning on and it didn't damage anything.

And while under a normal situation, they can put this on the user that they should have been aware of this, their warranty service should have known this before sending the replacement. That is on them, not on the drive manufacturers to cover. It's still stupid that this is even a thing that users have to be aware of and be careful not to make a stupid mistake and potentially fry very expensive components.

 

[Co BIY]

I was unaware the pinouts were not on some standard since the size and configurations of the plugs are all standard.

Shocking.

 

[Amdlova]

Why don't buy a seasonic instead

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

EVGA, like all non OEMs, contracts out manufacturing. The last time TomsHardware investigated PSUs, 11 years ago, EVGA was just a rebadger without any input in the designs, and used some questionable sources. If this happened the way the Reddit poster said it happened, and EVGA is still just rebading products, I would guess they changed to a different OEM for that product line, and if they didn't have any technical involvement the new models were constructed differently with different pinouts.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-oem-manufacturer,2913-6.html

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Why don't buy a seasonic instead

Some people need to suffer a catastrophe before they do something sensible like choose a proper source for the most important component of a computer system. I was one of those, thankfully it was early in my self building career and ever since have only used SeaSonic PSUs.

 

[suryasans]

I believe if those are hard disk drives, the data in the fried drives could still be saved if He asks a data recovery expert who usually has some spare hard drives PCBs from various models.

 

[USAFRet]

I believe if those are hard disk drives, the data in the fried drives could still be saved if He asks a data recovery expert who usually has some spare hard drives PCBs from various models.

That is absolutely not a guaranteed outcome.

And could have easily been prevented with any rational backup routine.

And, from the article, we have no idea of the status of the "data". Only the demise of the physical drives.

 

[newtechldtech]

He should Sue them for $$$$ . it is not only about the loss of his drives .. it is about putting him in danger of electric shock or even the entire thing catches fire ...

Get a good lawyer and get alot of $$$$ out of them. Plus the drives extra on top.

 

[NedSmelly]

Another case example of why people should stop thinking about companies as their friends. When EVGA pulled out of the graphics card market, the online discourse was on par with someone's cuddly grandparents dying.

 

[hotaru251]

He should Sue them for $$$$ .

and get laughed at?

There is zero proof (thats acceptable in court) it happened llike he states.
There is a reason data clauses are very rare as its nearly impossible to prove what actually caused it.
The system can easily be abused is why.

whats that? your drives are dying according to SMART? Welp would be such a bad thing to claim my storage drives died due to totally not my own fault but say it was psu by totally not purposefully casuing them to die on purpose to save a ton of $....

Another case example of why people should stop thinking about companies as their friends.

As someone who has used EVGA psu, GPU, & case over years & has used their support a few times....They are one of the better companies....but mistakes DO happen (doesnt mean its out of spite/ill intent).

Remember the New World killing gpu disaster all those yrs ago? evga replaced all of em (even before the reason was known) while others didn't.

EVGA's gpu stepup was also great for ppl who liked to upgrade frequently. (and they didnt need to do that as financially it was likely not a great profit vs buying entire new gpu)

Companies do want to be your friend (within a limit) as it generates brand loyalty & a repeat customer thus profit. However again PSU covering data is soemthing i'd never do as again it would be way too easy to abuse and lose $ due to bad eggs.


Also let this story remind you: Always read your documentation for anything that involves electricity....its entirely common and known "refreshes" happen using same SKU/part number where stuff changes (remember the shingled hdd lawsuit or the ssd, which i forget brand, that used lower quality controller randomly and was worse performing?)

This was a case of user error, company mishap clashed and caused damage. Sucks but it happen.

 

[NedSmelly]

Companies do want to be your friend (within a limit) as it generates brand loyalty & a repeat customer thus profit.

Indeed, we’re more or less in agreement here. Good customer service is one thing, but that’s all it is - a transactional consumer relationship.

 

[thestryker]

This definitely seems like a circumstance where EVGA should be covering the cost of drive replacement given this was a warranty replacement situation. There's no reasonable way for an end user to tell the pinouts have changed when they have no cables or pinout diagrams.

(remember the shingled hdd lawsuit or the ssd, which i forget brand, that used lower quality controller randomly and was worse performing?)

Western Digital over the undocumented changes to the Red drives.

This was a case of user error, company mishap clashed and caused damage. Sucks but it happen.

I'm curious why you say this is a case of user error. PSU companies do not give pinouts with their products and without wires the only way you could tell would be by testing every pin/opening up the PSU.

 

[Toopy]

When Antec released their first modular PSU I purchased one and one of the Sata cables was wired incorrectly from the factory. After much back and fourth they admitted fault and compensated me for the 3 drives it killed and provided a replacement cable.
Obviously didn’t cover any data loss,

At least antec came to the party, but I never bought another again.

 

[Amdlova]

I got here a cheap 600w evga. Use it one year and it's done more than that will burn something.
Have tons of evga cheap psu burned on my work.
Thse new series from evga it's cheap made not good brand at all. If you love your machine never buy a cheap PSU just buy a seasonic a cheaper model from seasonic will be better than these gold plus badge (80 plus) that standard today is fake. Fakeeeee x3

 

[DSzymborski]

Indeed, we’re more or less in agreement here. Good customer service is one thing, but that’s all it is - a transactional consumer relationship.

True, but so it is the other way around! The pizza place may be mostly concerned with me giving them the $20 in return for a pizza, but most of *my* friendship with them is similar, getting to give me the pizza in return for $20.

 

[Findecanor]

I believe if those are hard disk drives, the data in the fried drives could still be saved if He asks a data recovery expert who usually has some spare hard drives PCBs from various models.

I've heard of people recovering data from a mechanical harddrive with faulty circuit board by replacing it with one from an identical drive. YMMV.

I definitely think that EVGA should at least compensate the customer for his destroyed equipment. He did everything correct, and was not careless. He only trusted EVGA's service agent, as he had trusted the first power supply not to fry his drives in the first place.

I am disappointed that EVGA didn't compensate the customers before the story got out. With their already bad reputation it would only be in their own interest to do right. The bad reputation could cost them more in lost sales than what it would have cost to compensate the customer to begin with.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

We’ve heard in the past don’t use cables from different manufacturers due to these kind of things. Seems that applies across the board now days. EVGA should help him out I think. Ideally the user would have used the newer cables, but how many of us would have said same branding, it will be fine.

Really these cables really should be standardized across the industry so these types of things don’t happen. As should something like the tier system for when you buy a power supply for example so that manufacturers need to meet guidelines and that if they don’t they tell you the risks.

 

[thors_spatula]

We’ve heard in the past don’t use cables from different manufacturers due to these kind of things. Seems that applies across the board now days. EVGA should help him out I think. Ideally the user would have used the newer cables, but how many of us would have said same branding, it will be fine.

Really these cables really should be standardized across the industry so these types of things don’t happen. As should something like the tier system for when you buy a power supply for example so that manufacturers need to meet guidelines and that if they don’t they tell you the risks.

As per the article, they didn't send him the new cables so he used the old ones because why would you think a replacement of the same model would need new ones?

 

[thors_spatula]

When Antec released their first modular PSU I purchased one and one of the Sata cables was wired incorrectly from the factory. After much back and fourth they admitted fault and compensated me for the 3 drives it killed and provided a replacement cable.
Obviously didn’t cover any data loss,

At least antec came to the party, but I never bought another again.

I've always been a fan of antec hcg PSUs. They're made by seasonic and generally cheaper than the ones with seasonic branding.

 

[Notton]

Doesn't this make you wish for color coded power cables, and labeled socket pin-outs?

 

[Toopy]

I've always been a fan of antec hcg PSUs. They're made by seasonic and generally cheaper than the ones with seasonic branding.

Was way back in 2005, went to TT which were ok but always failed in a couple of years. Their warranty was good though I would generally get 3 units per purchase.
Went to a Corsair HX850 and after a few years it starter shutting down under sustained load.
have had seasonic since no problems so far.

However, I believe they are all in the same boat, since they are the hardest working component (in a gaming pc anyway). They all end up failing.

Now I buy the biggest wattage I can find, this way you are running the unit at maybe 60% (setup dependant of course)
Seems to be working so far, current seasonic is 3yrs old and doing well.