Has anyone else ever had a laptop charger burn out while rendering?
DawnStar
Posts: 70
I know that 4-5 hour renders make the machine work very hard, and that chargers can get quite hot during that time, but I was alarmed to come back at one point to find my charger had completely burn’t out, fusing the house lights in the process. I’m sure this can’t be normal. Has anyone else experienced this issue?
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I would never recommend a laptop for rendering. For future reference, I don't know if you did, but keep the vents free of dust (compressed air), and consider buying extra cooling. Ideally, use a desktop.
Rendering for hours on end, you are very likely pushing your machine beyond what the manufacturers intended it for. I'm also curious, how old is it?
It’s a brand new laptop - MSI GE62VR 7RF Apache Pro with NVidia GeForce 1060 gaming notebook. The laptop itself remains cool - it’s the charging unit that became very hot and then failed. I do intend to get a desktop as well, but my initial scan of what’s on offer indicated that, other than a Nvidia 1070 or 1080 card, most of them had a lower spec than this laptop!
@DawnStar
That's definitely not a Daz Studio issue. If the laptop is newish, that power supply failure is almost certainly what's called an infant mortality failure in various industries. Laptop power supplies in particular are very cheaply made. If the power supply was getting very hot that's a sign of a bad power supply and imminent failure. If you had breaker or fuse issues with your house ligts, you have even bigger issues.
If it's new then failures soon after purchase of a component is most likely when they occur, after that there is usually a good duration of use in them - Rendering is likely to affect that.
Fusing the house lights is actually worrying; not sure which country you're in, but in the UK lights and the sockets are on different circuits due to different ampage allowance and cross-trips shouldn't occur.
Presuming you have separate circuts lights and sockets, could the socket have been wired into the lights? Unless you're qualified, I'm not suggesting you check yourself.
Das honestly doesn't even push video-cards to any "game-level" limits. The IRAY, using Cuda-cores, is only using about 10% of your GPU's chip.
I would bet it was just a typical "dud" power-supply. That happens, a lot... Quality control in most places, works like this... "Send it out the door, if someone complains about it failing, replace it"... Because manufacturing yield is about 92% flawless (within margin), and it is too costly to test 100% of the products, to find that last 8% that will fail within the warantee period. You are the "Quality control inspector". :P Your unit failed...
Though a short like that, seems like it may have been a failure in the primary induction coil, power converter/transformer. Nothing can detect that. It is usually a bare spot on the magnet wires, within the sealed transformer. It heats-up and expands, creating shorts that fuse wires together and leave a smoldering nasty puddle of epoxy lingering around your house for months later.
How are you calculating that? GPU monitoring tools - I use GPU-Z - show the GPU working at 100% during a render. Games, as I understand, impose a more variable load on the GPU.
Contact the supplier or manufacturer - this is a warranty issue. Also, take some photos and notes. If the replacement goes up the same way, contact the Consumer Product Safety Commission (or your equivalent, if not in the US) as this product should not be on the market.
Thanks for the input everyone. I replaced the charger with the most expensive one I could find (of course they’re all pretty cheap, and no one seems to review simple chargers, and so you have no idea if they are any good or are in fact just cheap rubbish).
But so far this new one, although running hottish on a long render, is not running burning hot. The laptop itself remains cool/only slightly warm throughout.
It’s been so long since I had a desktop that I can scarcely remember, but a power cord from the power socket straight into the desktop circumvents these problems I imagine?
So perhaps it’s time for me to investigate moving to a high spec desktop. Does anyone know of any useful threads within the forums that could give me some guidance in this respect?
Thanks again
I'm rendering for several hours with my laptop, and it's only an hp notebook, and I'm never had my charger even get overly warm. Sounds like you got a defective product. Sorry to hear that. Don't give up. I think however, that I will get a desktop in the next year as I get more into this.
Thanks for that Formulaone. I think it comes down to how high a spec the laptop is and, in particular, the graphics card. Presumably the higher the spec the higher the power draw. Mine is a high spec gaming laptop, which I thought would be sufficient, and no doubt would be for games. But I suspect there’s a big difference between the sporadic fluctuating demand for resources in gaming and the relentless, focussed, resource-hungry requirement of multi-hour renders.
Now I’ve been bitten by the Daz Studio bug I’m definitely in the market now for a high spec desktop.
Since your laptop is brand new. You MUST contact with the shop where you bought it and ask for a replacement. If you use a different one from MSI, and something bad happens to your laptop, MSI will tell that it was your fault for using a non-oficial power supply.
On the other hand, is your right as consumer, and the shop is likely to help you here since is MSI fault. After the replacement you will have 2 power supplies (the official and the other one that you bought, so you can have a backup here). I don't think you will need to send the whole laptop, just the PSU, but just in case get in touch with the shop, and if that fails, with MSI.
And one last thinig, many times the most expensive doesn't mean the better. In the power supply world there are many brands which make contracts with 3rd parties manufacturers, so you can find one brand wich sells perfect PSU and the biggest crap within similar range prices at the same time. With a PSU you have to make a research about who is the manufacturer, models, failure, etc. I know, is something that we want to avoid, but this will make the different between changing a PSU per 6-12 months, per 12-24 or +24.
[I hope I didn't sound unfriendly, English is not my mother tongue and I think I sound too dramatic, is not my intention :P ]. Your laptop looks great, I hope it lasts for years :)