Why does nobody mention how easy it is to miss a loose ground pin on a PSU connector?

I spent 45 minutes troubleshooting a client's rig that kept shutting down under load in Phoenix last June, only to realize one of the 24-pin ground wires had backed out of the housing. Has anyone else had a cable defect slip past visual inspection like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

cole_davis4727d ago

Did you check for that right away or find it by accident?

skyler_mitchell26d ago

Ngl though, the ground pins are sneaky. I had a similar issue where a single ground wire on a SATA power splitter was barely hanging on, and it caused random drive dropouts for weeks before I caught it. The tricky part is that a loose pin can look fully seated from the top, especially on those dark colored housing connectors. What really helped me was using a multimeter on continuity mode to check every single pin from the terminal end before plugging it in. Tbh, I think visual inspection alone is a trap for these exact failures, because they hide behind the plastic.