You know what's fun? Waking up to a house full of smoke, fire alarms going off and finding your desktop engulfed in flames.. 
 
That was a reality I never even though about until last Friday...
 
Que 5:45AM in the morning. We live on a busy alley way where there are always garbage trucks, construction, etc.. So when I heard a beeping, I didn't think twice about it just being a truck in the alley way and not the smoke alarm in my office. Luckily my Fiancee was was more alert than I was at the time and jumped out of bed. By the time she got to the source and yelled back to me, the second Nest Protect fire alarm in the living room was going off saying "Head's up, there's smoke in the living room". This catapulted me out of bed to run that way only to come into my office and see what looked like a camp fire inside my computer case.. I immediatly told her to grab the fire extinguisher and started removing the glass cover off the front of the case. Upon opening, like any fire.. It ignited even more but I was ready. After a couple douses with the extinguisher, the fire was out.. But the smoke was so bad I couldn't even see where the door was anymore. I got back out of the room only after sucking in a bit of fumes that I could now feel in my lungs. Fire alarms still screaming at us. 
 
I trekked back into the office holding my breath to turn on a whole house exhaust fan I have in the window. Luckily I have one of these or the burnt plastic smell would have lingered forever.. Within 15 minutes, the smoke had cleared but the burnt plastic smell still lingers as I type this a week later.
 
I work with electronics, wiring, controllers, etc.. So the technical side portion of me kicked in. It's time to inventory what was damaged and what was salvageable. Given this is my personal / work computer, this cannot stay down long... 
 
I dissembled the entire thing, removed parts that were potentially salvageable in one pile and the items that were clearly damaged in another. When it came down to it..
 
EVGA 850W P2 - Toast and was where the fire started
Motherbaord - Toast
GTX 1070 Ti - Toast
Wiring - ALL toast
 
My first chat was to NZXT as I have their RGB contoller, Kraken X62 CPU cooler, Fans and an NZXT case with associated wiring. Although the case was a bit charred. I am extremely handy and have no problems refinishing the case. Their customer service was AMAZING. They didn't even ask for receipts.. Just asked what I had and what I needed. ALL WIRING THEY SENT FOR FREE. I didn't even have to pay shipping. Now THAT is service. Especially since I told them it was 100% the EVGA power supply that caused the fire. 
 
Next e-mail was to EVGA. They got back to me three hours later, but as it was the wekeend.. Not much they could do with without upper management approval. I told the tech "I am going to order a new motherboard and a new power supply (told him about NZXT above) because I have to get this PC back up and running, especially since I don't know what's good and what's bad". His reply was "Not a problem, we will likely reimburse you given this as this is the worst faulty PSU I have ever seen".
 
Simple right? WRONG.
 
Monday rolls around.. No word. OK cool.. Tuesday rolls around. "Still waiting on management".
 
Wednesday rolls around "Still waiting on management re-guarding the Motherboard reimbursement but let's go ahead and RMA the PSU and Graphics card. I need a credit card on file and you'll need to send those items back to be swapped out".
 
No thanks. I'd like a full decision on everything. And what I need is reimbursement for the parts I have already purchased (as we discussed on Friday) due to the faulty PSU fire. "Well.. You'll likely need to return the items you bought, we will send you a new PSU and likely we will provide you with an EVGA motherboard but I am still waiting for approval on that". I said that I will need to pay a restocking fee for opened and installed parts to which he replied "I don't know of any company that would charge you a restocking fee".
 
I am BAFFLED at this point.. Does he not realize that EVGA, the company he works for charged a 15% restocking fee on parts open USED OR NOT USED? 
 
This is where we left things.. I told him to get me in touch with someone who can actually make the decisions as this back and fourth to no where is wasting my time. So here I am. A week later sharing my story with you. Make of it what you will.. But so far I am not impressed AT ALL with their warranty service and their lack of communication.
 
Apparently a faulty PSU that starts a fire isn't that big of a deal. I am just glad I was home as if it was two hours later. We both would have been gone and there is no doubt that faulty PSU fire would have set the house on fire. Luckily the fire alarm went off and we were able to get to it pretty quickly and act quickly. 
 
I'll update once EVGA still decides to give me the run around or actually owns up and takes care of the issue. The should be bending over backwards to get this taken care of considering I am going through the trouble to get this rebuilt, repainted, etc.. 
 
Photo's for your viewing pleasure. 
  

Yikes, that's bad. Glad no one was hurt.

WOW!

Was this with the stock cables?

Also, definitely look into home owners or renters insurance. If you have it, this is it’s job.

Typically insurance doesn’t care about “now” they care about “new”. If my computer were to get struck by lighting, my insurance would replace it at the cost of exactly what was paid.

So, in the end, it really depends on the insurance of the OP. It never hurts to ask. If they don’t have insurance, which is usually relatively cheap, then there won’t be any need to try.

 
 
 
 

Mohazzle4209
Hey Hey another EVGA Explosion!  Looks like they're coming in HOT!  Lookout Gigabyte, EVGA's in the house!  My P+ just exploded on my mining rig with all 30 series cards.  1600w P+ that had never seen over 1000w and was connected to a very high dollar 3kva rackmount UPS with power conditioning...best case scenario, but flipped that switch to boot up a new board while i was adding GPUs to it, didn't even have them all hooked up yet and this power supply shared the load with a 2nd 1600w no name PSU that's still chugging along just fine.  But that 1600p couldn't handle ~200w (I also have digital monitors measuring power from the wall on every power supply/rig I have) at boot and literally put out several sparks/flames, sounded like automatic gunfire, and was very very lucky my hand was still on the PSU switch so I could flick it right back off before it actually caught anything on fire...Still assessing the damage since it was connected to roughly $5k worth of hardware...which is why I wanted a 1600w platinum or better power supply to begin with...Originally was running on the 1000w GQ PSU and minus a GPU or two, decided I should probably up the power and efficiency since I was starting to get close to that 1kw rating.  With the 1600P+ I was very very often flirting with that 1000w limit of the previous PSU, but never did I see it go over that and I monitor my stuff like crazy because I don't want a fire in my place or anything like that...I went over excess in making sure I had enough power for all my rigs and everything..I run a couple nodes, a file server, personal gaming rig and 3 mining rigs...the other 2 miners are small compared to this one...but this one has 3200w at its disposal supposedly....I'm anxious to see what EVGA says.  Far less anxious to start hooking these GPUs up to a good PSU to see how many may have survived that blast.

2 PSU’s in 2 years… and lookout gigabyte? Weird way to start.

Just a heads up, the manufacturer if the P2 is Superflower. The manufacturer of the P+ is FSP. Not really the whole gigabyte scenario that was being lauded to in the beginning. Get in contact with EVGA, and let us know what happens. Feel free to make your own post so that your troubles can be tracked separate from a different OEM.