There are few things scarier for a PC gamer than the possibility of one of your peripherals spontaneously combusting and scorching your furniture. Thankfully combustion isn't a common issue in the community, but if Reddit user lommelinn's recent experience is anything to go by, it's not completely unheard of, either.
According to lommelinn, they found their Gigabyte mouse "burning with large flames".
"Black smoke filled the room. I quickly extinguished the fire, but exhaled a lot of smoke in the process and my room is in a bad shape now, covered with black particles (my modular synth as well). Fortunately we avoided the worst, but the fact that this can happen is still shocking."
The mouse in question, which the user calls "an older, wired optical mouse from Gigabyte", is actually the Gigabyte M6880X, as we can see from the picture of its underside. That is, indeed, an older mouse, but while it's technically still optical, it's probably better described as a laser mouse to distinguish it from infrared ones.
My Gigabyte mouse caught fire and almost burned down my apartment from r/pcmasterrace
If this was a spontaneous combustion caused by a mouse fault of some kind, Gigabyte will have some 'splainin' to do. And indeed, Gigabyte tells us that it's reached out to the user and is in the "early stages of the investigation" but has "escalated this internally to try and solve this issue."
The company has posted to the Reddit thread: "We have been made aware of the incident shared by lommelin regarding the M6880X gaming mice. Our customer's safety is our top priority and we are actively looking into this case. Our team has reached out to lommelin to offer support and to investigate the matter fully. In the meantime, we appreciate the community’s understanding and patience as we work to address this issue."
As expected, Reddit has already done some investigating of its own, including watching tear-downs of the mouse to see what could have caused such a fiery disaster—the only potential problem seems to be that it does tend to collect lint inside, which could have perhaps provided a hotbed when combined with years of grease or other materials. Which sounds like a bit of a stretch, but who knows.
As far as the mouse itself goes, though, at least according to its internals and its specifications, nothing like this should have been able to happen. It's a USB 2.0 mouse which is limited to 0.5 A of current, and should not be able to cause the plastic to catch fire like it did.
There is, of course, the possibility that the cause of the fire was something else entirely. Though lommelin suggests there was no light being focused on the mouse to cause it to ignite, as some Redditors had suggested could've been the cause.
We'll keep an eye out for updates on this one. Gigabyte might have more answers: ideally the follow-up investigation will be able to offer some insight into what occured, at least to settle any nerves among other Reddit users.
