Computer wiring question

[novicegeek]

So, I have an old computer case that I love (Apevia X-Discovery), but one of the problem I had was the lights on the front went out (the computer has two vertical strips of LED lights on the front). Well, I traced the problem close to the Molex plug. It seems that at some point in time, this maybe overheated and burned a hole through the insulation (which appears to be shrink wrap). I'm not sure what the connection to the wires look like underneath, but I'm assuming I can strip some insulation off the wires and reattach it.

But my real question is, what do you think caused this? I can tell you that I have a bunch of wires crammed into the bottom of my computer behind the GPU bracket, so that might be a clue, but I'm not sure.

Do any of you have some know-how to give me some ideas as to what happened? I just want to prevent this from occurring again (more to avoid a fire than a light outage).

Thanks. And speaking of, Happy Thanksgiving to all.

 

[Cromewell]

You are right, heat could cause it, and generally that is caused by overdrawing power vs what the wire is rated for.

The first picture kind of looks like the connectors in the plug itself might be able to wiggle and touch but its really hard to tell. I would not expect a strip of case lighting leds be able to overdraw so a short somewhere upstream of the melt point seems most likely to me.

That said, I can only guess. You could rewire with heavier wire and measure what is happening at different points to try and narrow down possibilities, or to be completely safe just lose the front lights if this was the only issue.