iknowhowtofixit said:
JackNaylorPE said:
you have a mess there electrically .... lose the cord, lose the adapters. Voltage drop thru all that stuff means higher amp draw and that's likely what fried everything.
The only way to verify that is with a multi-meter. However, I doubt that this is the case given that these PSUs blew within 20 seconds. OP can you confirm exactly what has changed in your setup to power these PSUs? (New surge protector, new drop cord, new location, etc)
If the neutral was hot, wouldn't the surge protector be messed up, or anything else I connected to it? I also unplugged the surge protector and plugged in a normal CFL lamp and it didn't show any issues.
I moved it to the garage because it was too hot in the house, there's a sturdy extension cord that I've used before with power tools and other high-draw, it's a 16AWG line rated for 105C (I was shocked to see that too) with multiple outlets running along its length. Then it's plugged directly into a single outlet in the wall. There's one CFL lamp running off the closest outlet to of the extension cord tot he wall, the second outlet is where I was running the surge protector. Aside from that, nothing else is drawing power or plugged into the extension cord. There's maybe 15ft of it between the outlet the surge protector is in and the wall.
The surge protector is undamaged and shows ground/protected still and anything plugged into either the surge protector and/or the outlet that the surge protector was plugged into was unaffected in any negative way. I do have a multimeter so I can check but a brief instruction on how to check if the neutral is hot and what I should be looking for would help me out immensely. I appreciate the time/effort to answer this that you both have went through!
I almost ruled out something wrong with the wiring or outlet simply because no breaker tripped, the box fan that was on the same surge protector didn't even hiccup when the PSU blew (both times) and the light on the other outlet of the extension cord didn't flicker either. But the fact that both blew so quickly...seems and feels so wrong and unlikely.
As for losing the adapter, that shouldn't cause any voltage drop. It's the same thing as shorting out the pins on the PSU to get it to turn on, except it triggers whenever the main PSU is on and without the need of using a paperclip or whatever one may use. No actual power is running constantly through the adapter. The adapter is turned on through a short of two wires (green and black) that comes from one PSU and registers the power turned on, shorting the pins in the second PSU's ATX/motherboard connector, allowing both to turn on at the same time. That way the second PSU can power the remaining components without needing to be switched on itself.