ATI Radeon HD 7950 caught fire

[Esmond Ivers]

I was playing Starcraft 2 on my PC on highest settings with resolution set at 1080p. I have an ATI Radeon HD 7950 in my PC. After playing the game for around 4 hours, my PC suddenly crashed. I thought that it must be a bug in the game, so I tried to restart the system and it just failed to start. I opened my CPU to see the cause of this problem and saw a small flame on the graphic card. My RAM is nearby the graphic card, so RAM to have few minor burns. RAM works fine but the graphic card is badly damaged. I’ll be getting the graphic card replaced soon, but I wanted to ask, what can be the cause f fire and how do I avoid t in future?

[Calvert]

I think it must be the power cables and CPU fan which has failed to stop the overheating of the system. The power cables in your system must be loose which must have created small spark now and then. These sparks must have been falling on graphic card to create a burst of flames. The graphic card in your CPU must be so placed that the air from CPU fan must not be reaching properly. As the air must not be reaching the graphic card, the flames must not be ceased leading to fire.

[HafizaAhmed]

The graphic card must have been overheated. To add to this problem, the graphic card must be having a bad circuit print. If there was any fault in the graphic card, then it would have stopped working even before it would have caught fire. Many graphic cards are built with mechanism to stop when overheated. The solder which connects the graphic card to the main connection melts when the temperature rise. As soon as the temperature of the system goes down, the soldered point reconnects itself.

[Omanand]

The graphic cards are designed to endure the voltage as high as 200 W. If the electric current flowing between the monitor and he graphic card is more than the specified value then chances of the graphic card bursting in flames is possible. To avoid this, you must use a spike guard connector to connect your PC.