My mobo killed my pc...

Well it tiz be official. I suspected my mobo was going out and then it did. The funny thing is, my mobo took out my 3.0e p4, 9800 pro/xt, and a 80 gig hdd with it!!!

You may be wondering if that is possible or not (i didnt know it was) but it is

The worst thing about it is, before i knew my mobo killed my pc, i was so excited when i got my knew p4p800-e just to be let down when AGAIN! So here i am, brand new mobo, pc still dead and im like WTF.

I have a second computer but not everything is interchangeable so i could only test some stuff. The two things i couldnt test just so happened to be the cpu and graphics card. So i had to break down and take it to a...."gasp"...tech guy!!! And my pride went with it..

But low and behold, i shall get a bigger and better pc! Currently everything is being rma'd except the graphics card. For that i'm getting an asus x800 pro vivo from the egg.

I just thought i'd share my story to forewarn pplz on the dangers of when motherboards attack!!!

Is the RAM still alive?

Its pretty strange to have a motherboard take components with it when it goes, ESPECIALLY a HDD. Im inclined to think that your PSU had something to do with it.

I'd bet it was the PSU as well.

I've seen plenty of motherboards that quietly died a peaceful death. The only time I've personally seen a system catastrophically take out CPU, mobo, harddrives, vid card, etc. was by power supply failure or by a lightning strike.

hazmatt87 said:

Is the RAM still alive?

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Alive and kickin.

batboy said:

The only time I've personally seen a system catastrophically take out CPU, mobo, harddrives, vid card, etc. was by power supply failure or by a lightning strike.

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My first inclination was the psu, but the tech guy said the psu is fine after running whatever tests he did on it...i'm still not sure if i believe him though.

I actually had the whole lightning strike scenario occur on the exact same pc, but all it seemed to do was ruin the psu. As soon as i put in my back up it ran the same as before.

Is it possible for a psu that cant dish out the needed wattage to slowly deteriorate the system?

Even so, the system acted funny with freezes and such so i upgraded from an antec 350 to a 480 and no change whatsoever. The tech guy said it was most likely the mobo...i guess im still not fully convinced of what happened.

My antec was trusty to me... but i've had plenty of psu's die on me and take thing with them.

I suppose since you already rma'd it you cant look for brown marks or burn marks on the mobo connector.

Check the psu connectors tho. Anytime I've ever had a psu take out components, there was burn marks on the 20 pin connector.

I don't think it is possible for a motherboard to take out a *HDD*. I would definitely point towards the PSU. And the PSU can seem to be fully working when tested by a tech, but still could have killed components!

Have you noticed something that you missed in your first post?

What do a HDD, CPU, and video card all have in common?

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(answer):

+12v.

They all use the 12v line.
Now,
either your motherboard had a REALLY faulty or badly tuned resistor which completely KILLED the 12v somehow, which frankly, is AFAIK, next to impossible, or the PSU did it. After all, the HDD does NOT get any power from the motherboard at all ! It gets it directly from the PSU, unless you're using an SATA connector (which can give it power). The video card gets its 1.5v for signaling from the AGP slot, but the main power comes from the 12v connector. I would put the chance of the motherboard itself taking out those components at roughly 5%.

And the P4 uses the auxilary +12v connector for power, although the voltage regulators handle the vcore. Pretty obvious if the mosfets suddenly went belly up, that it wouldn't touch the HDD and video card....

Was your HDD connected to SATA or to IDE?

Falkentyne said:

What do a HDD, CPU, and video card all have in common
(answer):

+12v.

They all use the 12v line.
Now,
either your motherboard had a REALLY faulty or badly tuned resistor which completely KILLED the 12v somehow, which frankly, is AFAIK, next to impossible, or the PSU did it. After all, the HDD does NOT get any power from the motherboard at all ! It gets it directly from the PSU, unless you're using an SATA connector (which can give it power). The video card gets its 1.5v for signaling from the AGP slot, but the main power comes from the 12v connector. I would put the chance of the motherboard itself taking out those components at roughly 5%.

And the P4 uses the auxilary +12v connector for power, although the voltage regulators handle the vcore. Pretty obvious if the mosfets suddenly went belly up, that it wouldn't touch the HDD and video card....

Was your HDD connected to SATA or to IDE?

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By George i think you've got it! Some tech guy huh
It was an ide HDD that died, i actually had a SATA HDD hooked up as well but it remains fine and dandy...Thx for clearing that up for me

I never actually rma'ed my mobo, it looks fine too btw but its waisted...
So, who wants me to ship them my Abit IC7-Max3 so you can torch it, twist it, smash it etc. etc.??? Free shipping!!!

Edit: I"ve hooked up my brand new mobo to that freakin Killer PSU already, i hope its still ok...