Tonight I was playing a computer game when the video crapped out. My attention turned to my pc so I could hit the reset button. Smoke was billowing out. After a moment's consternation I yanked the power cord out the back of it. The source of the smoke turned out to be a molex - sata connector attached to a DVD player. So I disconnected it. Then I poured another beer and rebooted my pc.

Impressive!

Sounds like an over volted agp socket was to blame.

You been tinkering, have you?!

No ocing here. I'm thinking it may be down to defective PSU or mb, based on recurring hdd problems. Or it could just be the cheapie molex-sata connector, which is the thing that actually melted (possibly taking out the dvd player).

Anyway everything is running pretty cool atm.

If it's just one then more likely it want plugged in all the way. Poor connection = higher resistance =more heat.

It's been plugged in >2 years, but I've always found sata connectors to be a bit wobbly. Can't be sure because of the heat damage but it appears the plastic insulation on the plug had deteriorated.

Odd. Nothing in the pc case should cause it to deteriorate. Have you got uv lamps in there to make it more bling?

Nope, nope and nope. The connector I picked up in a corner pc components store for a buck fifty. I'm guessing it was made from shit materials. I wasn't using the DVD player at the time either.

Clearly it's the work of aliens, then.

Finally got around to testing the dvd player from an external power plug + usb. Despite visible scorch marks around the power receptacle (including edge of the pcb), it appears to be fine. So I guess it just was the molex-sata power adaptor & I can reinstall the player with a new adaptor.

Obviously it's useful to have it back in the computer, but how often do you actually use it?

FWIW, been using my DVD/Blu-ray drive a hell of a lot recently, been ripping my CDs and movie collection, so it's coming in dammed useful.

Fairly often, but critically for boot CDs (my pc doesn't support booting from usb). I have a usb-attached burner.

Welp, it appears the dvd player is not going to be usable, at least not on the mb sata connector. I had tested for that by booting from it, and it worked fine. However today when I attempted to copy the contents of a photo cd to the hdd, it crashed both Fedora and XP. After disconnecting it I was able to copy the cd no problem from another, usb-attached DVD writer.