Possible to have only part of a PSU break?

[CaptainTom]

So I woke up this morning to see my machine operating in an odd way: Some of the graphics cards are seemingly not turning on, but some are. When I switched PCIE connectors around, another one of the cards wouldn't activate.

So, is it possible to have just a part of the power supply randomly break?

Model:

Thermaltake TOUGHPOWER 1000W 80 PLUS GOLD Semi Modular Power Supply PS-TPD-1000MPCGUS-1

 

[Pat Flynn]

It's not impossible... It looks like a modular power supply, maybe try another PCIe cable for the card that isn't working. Also, try connecting those cables to different PCIe ports on the power supply.

 

[10tacle]

"Some of the graphics card..."

How many GPUs do you have?

 

[InvalidError]

I'd guess one of the 12V rails or PCIe PSU connectors/cables went bust.

 

[CaptainTom]

It's not impossible... It looks like a modular power supply, maybe try another PCIe cable for the card that isn't working. Also, try connecting those cables to different PCIe ports on the power supply.

So it seems like one of sata power cables went bad. I completely removed one of the sata power cables, and switched the cards' risers to different ones. Problem has gone away for about 15 minutes so far, and I will update if anything changes (but I don't expect it to).

But I now I have a few follow up questions:

-There is an open sata cable slot on my power supply that hasn't ever had any of the modular cables plugged into it. Would it be safe to simply shrug this off and plug the sata power cable into that unused part of the power supply?

-How common is this type of thing? Is it plausible that simply just one of the power ports on my PSU "burned out", and the rest of the PSU is ok for the foreseeable future?

I just want to know if this is common, and if I should expect the PSU to snowball into more problems soon...

 

[voxic]

It is possible, I had an issue where one of the 12V rails went bad, and every time I plugged something into it my PC would just power off.

 

[10tacle]

I just want to know if this is common, and if I should expect the PSU to snowball into more problems soon...

That's why I was asking how many GPUs (and what model). According to the label, your PSU has a single 83 amp +12v rail. How long have you had this build and did you ever notice any hiccups previously?

 

[CaptainTom]

I just want to know if this is common, and if I should expect the PSU to snowball into more problems soon...

That's why I was asking how many GPUs (and what model). According to the label, your PSU has a single 83 amp +12v rail. How long have you had this build and did you ever notice any hiccups previously?

-There are 6 midrange GPU's total, but they are heavily undervolted (I wonder if you can guess what this machine is used for lol).

-The PSU hasn't had too many problems overall, but yeah I did need to clock things down substantially after seeing it had been pulling more wattage from the wall then it was rated for (Now it pulls under 1000w).

-If one of the 12v went bad, oh well I suppose. I just want to make sure the other rails aren't in danger due to whatever happened to this one (It shouldn't have had too much stress over that sata cable in the first place though).

I know this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, but I once owned a Haswell gaming system; and ~6 months one of the sata ports would die for some reason. However I never cared because I had 12 sata ports lol, and it never affected the other parts of the PC. I am thus hoping that is the case here.