I was in the middle of a game of Marvel Rivals when my PC unexpectedly shut down. I noticed smoke coming from my extension box and realized that my power supply (PSU) cord had melted. To give you some context, my previous power supply, a Gigabyte P650B, recently failed, and I replaced it with a Gigabyte P650G. However, I continued to use the old power cord from the P650B. Has anyone experienced a similar situation? Could the old cable be the culprit, or is this a symptom of a more serious problem with the new PSU or my extension box? Here are my PC specs for reference: Ryzen 5 7600X, Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7600, MSI PRO B650M-P, Corsair Vengeance 16GB RAM DDR5 DRAM 5600MHz, Kingston NV2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD.
3 Answers
Your extension box might be damaged. If you were pulling too much power through it or if the cable was being crushed or stepped on, that could've caused the insulation to fail and lead to melting.
Honestly, it’s time to look for a different PSU. The Gigabyte PSUs have a reputation for burning or exploding, so I wouldn’t blame the cable in this case.
It sounds like the old cable was the issue here. Make sure your PC is properly grounded and surge protected. If you reach out to support, keep in mind they might question using a cable from a different PSU manufacturer.
I’m pretty sure my extension box is a surge-protected one.

What does POS mean?