Power supply fries 22TB of data after EVGA RMA mishap

One Redditor accidentally fried 22TB of data after EVGA sent a replacement PSU, which the user connected to existing cables using the wrong pinout.

Despite EVGA leaving the graphics card market back in 2022, they’ve still been going strong with power supplies, motherboards, and various other computer parts.

Reddit user sgircys took to the Data Hoarding subreddit on March 19, 2024, to share their latest interaction with the company, but it wasn’t exactly positive.

According to the Redditor, their 1000w power supply immediately had issues after building a computer, so they sent it in for a warranty replacement from the company. EVGA’s rules for sending in a modular power supply involve the customer keeping the cables, as they’ll only receive the bare unit as a replacement.

So they did, but when they plugged in all the cables from the previous power supply — the computer didn’t recognize their staggering 22TB of storage drives.

“Then I opened up the EVGA box and grabbed the cables that go along with it, which I had set aside and labelled previously. I plugged everything in and tried to boot up the PC with no luck. Only a click, which I figured might be an overload protection circuit,” they said

“I immediately had to double check to see if I mixed any cables somehow, but everything was correct and only the EVGA GQ cables (that came with the power supply) were used. As the first step of troubleshooting, I disconnected the SATA power from my SATA hard drives. And just like that, it booted up completely fine.”

They talked to EVGA support, who then allegedly confirmed that the pin layout of the power supplies had been changed between OP’s original unit and the replacement.

Unfortunately, the Redditor put their old Corsair power supply back into the PC, and quickly realized that the hard drives were “fried” and no longer worked.

“I double and triple checked, using a different PC as the test PC with the drives even, but they were dead,” the user said.

In a follow up post, sgircys says they reached out to EVGA regarding the warranty unit allegedly frying their hard drives — only to be told to reach out to the hard drive manufacturer for a replacement.

Remember folks, different power supplies use different pinouts, meaning many of their cables are not interchangeable between different models and brands.