EVGA PSU short-circuited after 8 months - should I be worried about rest of system?

[hagakure_s81]

Hi all,
I started buying parts for my first PC build last december, with the PSU and some ram being one of the first parts. It wasn't until January/February that I actually built my system, and it has been running great ever since. The PSU was a EVGA G2 750W SuperNova.

However last thursday I was casually watching some YouTube videos when one of the circuit breakers in my house suddenly flipped. Since I had in the same room as my PC also the TV, DVD player, Fiber modem etc. (on a different wall socket and power board) I tried to turn things back on one at a time to see what caused it, or if it was just a power surge or something. When I turned power back onto the PC (not even hitting the power button, but just having PSU plugged in and switch to ON) - the breaker flipped again.

I removed the PSU from the PC and plugged only the PSU into a wall socket in the garage, and used a circuit bridge that came with the PSU (completes the circuit making the PSU think the power button of PC has been pushed), and again it immediately flipped the breaker. 
I also had an old circuit tester and measuring in Ω across the PSU power plug Ω shows 0 (as if circuit completed). So to me, it looks as if I just got an unlucky unit and its short ciruiting for whatever reason.

Since it is still within 1 year of buying I am returning the unit to the reseller that I bought it from, I haven't made any contact with EVGA on this yet. But I am worried if the reseller should ship me a new PSU, and I plug it in only to find the system is no longer working due to MB, or GPU or anything else being damaged. Do you think this is likely or possible? 

I'm curious to know what could have caused this? Is it possible a power surge somehow damaged the PSU? It is on a power board with (supposedly) surge protection, and the PSU itself lists a bunch of protections on the specs page of EVGA website (including OVP, UVP, OCP, OPP and SCP)
In my experience (which admittedly is more mechanical in nature than electrical), if something is going to fail due to faulty unit, it will usually fail in the first few hours, not 8 months down the track, but heh, I don't know much about electronics. I should note that the unit wasn't dusty (ok there is always a little) but the case I have has some good filters (Phanteks Evolv ATX TG) and it hasn't really had time to accumulate a lot of dust. Humidity and temperature should be well within reason - since its winter here we had heatpump on a fair bit which takes any humidity out of the air.

Funny thing is I ran my old pc with some no-brand chinese PSU for years and years without a problem, and the highly rated EVGA unit didn't last a year

 

[Jay_29]

Hi all,
I started buying parts for my first PC build last december, with the PSU and some ram being one of the first parts. It wasn't until January/February that I actually built my system, and it has been running great ever since. The PSU was a EVGA G2 750W SuperNova.

However last thursday I was casually watching some YouTube videos when one of the circuit breakers in my house suddenly flipped. Since I had in the same room as my PC also the TV, DVD player, Fiber modem etc. (on a different wall socket and power board) I tried to turn things back on one at a time to see what caused it, or if it was just a power surge or something. When I turned power back onto the PC (not even hitting the power button, but just having PSU plugged in and switch to ON) - the breaker flipped again.

I removed the PSU from the PC and plugged only the PSU into a wall socket in the garage, and used a circuit bridge that came with the PSU (completes the circuit making the PSU think the power button of PC has been pushed), and again it immediately flipped the breaker. 
I also had an old circuit tester and measuring in Ω across the PSU power plug Ω shows 0 (as if circuit completed). So to me, it looks as if I just got an unlucky unit and its short ciruiting for whatever reason.

Since it is still within 1 year of buying I am returning the unit to the reseller that I bought it from, I haven't made any contact with EVGA on this yet. But I am worried if the reseller should ship me a new PSU, and I plug it in only to find the system is no longer working due to MB, or GPU or anything else being damaged. Do you think this is likely or possible? 

I'm curious to know what could have caused this? Is it possible a power surge somehow damaged the PSU? It is on a power board with (supposedly) surge protection, and the PSU itself lists a bunch of protections on the specs page of EVGA website (including OVP, UVP, OCP, OPP and SCP)
In my experience (which admittedly is more mechanical in nature than electrical), if something is going to fail due to faulty unit, it will usually fail in the first few hours, not 8 months down the track, but heh, I don't know much about electronics. I should note that the unit wasn't dusty (ok there is always a little) but the case I have has some good filters (Phanteks Evolv ATX TG) and it hasn't really had time to accumulate a lot of dust. Humidity and temperature should be well within reason - since its winter here we had heatpump on a fair bit which takes any humidity out of the air.

Funny thing is I ran my old pc with some no-brand chinese PSU for years and years without a problem, and the highly rated EVGA unit didn't last a year

First test your other components with another PSU. I would document your observations and deal directly with EVGA (in writing). It’s easier to deal with the manufacturer directly if they are liable for any additional damages.

On another note, this whole brand name thing is highly overrated. I’ve had two Seasonics unable to deliver stable power to my Kingpin cards before. I’ve encountered some very expensive Maingear computers at work and they used EVGA bronze power supplies. I still prefer to use Seasonic PSUs, but I’m pretty sure I could throw in some bronze PSUs from any half decent manufacturer and still be fine.

 

[hagakure_s81]

First test your other components with another PSU. I would document your observations and deal directly with EVGA (in writing). It’s easier to deal with the manufacturer directly if they are liable for any additional damages.

Yeah good point, I will contact EVGA first before returning the unit to the reseller, depending on what EVGA advise.

 

[Karadjgne]

Think about failure rates. Not hard to imagine a unit like the Evga G2 750w having sold 1 million units worldwide. Even if it had a measly 1% failure rate, that's still 10,000 failed units. Imagine something like the Seasonic S12-II that's been around forever it seems, and is the same platform used in the Antec HCG-M and xfx pro/TS units. Can we say 10's of millions of units? At a 1% failure rate, world wide, that's 100,000+ bunk psus.

That's a lot of psus gone bad, but there's no hope for it. Even 1% is high, but there's many platforms that broach 10%, which is abysmal. Any psu can go bad, even the SuperFlower built Leadex G2's which are among the top best platforms there is. It happens.
Fortunately, it's Evga. And they have the best service/support department of any company I've ever dealt with, which is a lot over the years.
Call them.

 

[hagakure_s81]

Fortunately, it's Evga. And they have the best service/support department of any company I've ever dealt with, which is a lot over the years.
Call them.

I hear this a lot about EVGA, so thats great.
Thankfully its not an ASUS 😀 had to return one of their smart phones after a month or 2, and was politely to to go **** myself cause I lived in another part of the world lol

 

[Karadjgne]

Asus isn't bad. But I live in the US. I've rma'd my own personal z77 and had a replacement 8 days later. No hassle at all. But Asus itself has worldwide sales and service, so I'm puzzled that they'd deny service because of location unless you are in a country that's under some sort of political embargo, which is out of their hands.

 

[hagakure_s81]

Asus isn't bad. But I live in the US. I've rma'd my own personal z77 and had a replacement 8 days later. No hassle at all. But Asus itself has worldwide sales and service, so I'm puzzled that they'd deny service because of location unless you are in a country that's under some sort of political embargo, which is out of their hands.

I think its more the fact that the ASUS phones aren't sold here (I live in NZ - who'd want to embargo us?), I bought it thru Amazon straight from ASUS. Probably my ASUS motherboard, if it broke, I could return it, as it was sold here in NZ.

The problem I had with the phone though, seems a lot of other people had the same - and ASUS never bothered to create a fix, or even reply to peoples forum posts on the subject - so I don't hold out very high hopes for working directly with ASUS in the case of motherboard, should that ever happen 😛

Just an update with EVGA - first reply they said to start RMA process then ship the unit to Taiwan, 2nd reply they said to save time and money, just send it back to the NZ shop I bought it from... lol - so helpful, but a little confusing.

 

[Karadjgne]

Oh that's easy. 1st reply was auto response, most ppl still under vendor warranty (which is usually a year) don't contact Evga, that'll happen once that runs out and now you are into the manufacturer warranty. Once that was researched and verified you got reply #2. If there is an issue with the vendor return, contact Evga, it'll get sorted out.