Is my motherboard damaged?

So when building my pc i installed the motherboard without standoffs. This was due to the fact that i was basing my pc build off my old pc build which have standoffs screws. The previous build as built by a granddad and i watched him as he built it. Problems is on my previous build i had stuttering in games and sometime the os would lag and stutter. I lived with the issue thinkin it was normal.After finding that it was not normal i soon looked to upgrade my pc. So i upgraded to a knew pc thinking that it would resolve my issue. The problem is my system does not perform smoothly like the previous one. At first i had a cpu overheating issue(cpu was reaching above 80 c in intel extreme tuning) that ended with me getting a h100i cpu cooler instead of using the stock cooler. When i installed the new cpu cooler i at fisrt turned on the pc and the pump was not running, I also smelt a small burnt smell but did not see any smoke. I turned my pc off and made sure that the fan cooler was plugged in correctly, and found that it was not and i corrected it(3 pin was plugged into the wrong pins). After that i tried to locate the burn smell but failed to find the source. Thinking it could be something else in the room sense my sibling was cooking something downstairs i thought nothing of it. I powered on my pc again and the pump was working and i did not smell another burning smell. After upgrading to a h100i my cpu temps stay below 70 c for a i74770k 4.4 ghz. The problem is that sometimes my pc runs sluggish. When i press the power button my takes 7 sces to show display, and 6 secs to go to the desktop in the os. When i play games i get stutter even with vsync off. This even happens when i am running my games off my 500 gb ssd that i got for games. I ensured that my ssds were plugged into sata 6 gb ports and the achi mode was enabled. To add to the problem my hardware also does not play games a well as it should, for example on the witcher 3 i struggle to maintain a sloid 60 fps on a 980 at ultra settings without hairworks, even with the latest patch. For 2 weeks i used the pc in the cm storm trooper case without the mobo installed on standoffs but then went to install the mobo with standoffs last week. I made sure that all my drivers were up to date and such. But i still had all the issues. When that did not resolve my stutter. On top of the stutter i also heard this high pitch noise from the the speakers connected to my pc. I installed a sound card and i still had the issue. When i failed to find out what the issue was i decided to go to a professional. I took my pc to microcenter where i bought all my components and had them do a diagnostic. They took 3 days but finally said that my system was running fine and that all my parts were healthy and theu could not hear the high pitch noise. I then called for a bios update as well in hopes that could resolve the issue. I asked that if my board was damaged or short circuited but they said if that was the case it would not post. But it feels like they were using a different pc becaues when i got my pc back had the same issues, and also the bios update did nothing to the performance liked i hope it would. After reading about motherboard shorts and how to tell i wonder if, my motherboard could still be damaged even though it post, since i previously smelt burning. What else could cause these issues? I used intel processor diagnostic tool to test my cpu for possible faults and it passed the test. I used the furmark test to see if my gpu is at fault but i am getting normal results and did not see any stutters or slowdowns during the test. I am just a little paranoid because i feel that the mobo could have been damaged during the period i used it standoffs. I had this issue of suttering and a high pitch noise with my old pc which also did not have standoffs. My pc has only had one bsod and that was when i was installing a nevidia driver. After that bsod i did the same install and it installed without any bsods. Did is mess up my mobo installing and using it without standoffs?


my specs:
i7-4790k up to 4.4 ghz turbp boost
evga gtx 980 superclocked
mai gaming 5 motherboard
samsung evo 120 gb ssd(windows 7 loaded on this drive)
crucial 500 gb ssd
western disgital 1 tb hdd
cm storm trooper case
evga nexgold 750 watt psu

Did is mess up my mobo installing and using it without standoffs?

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Umm.... how did you screw the board down without standoffs? Isn't the I/O panel not in line with the peripherals?

Some pictures would be helpful perhaps. I can't see how you would install a motherboard into a case without standoffs. Generally when in doubt, take everything out of the case and set it all up on the table to eliminate the possibility of the back side of the board touching the case. It's not a good thing.

When i installed the new cpu cooler i at fisrt turned on the pc and the pump was not running, I also smelt a small burnt smell but did not see any smoke.

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I'd imagine the PC was very hot. This type of oops can hurt hardware also.

Hard to say if the board is actually damaged. But next time.... use the stand offs.

I would pack the board up and take it back to the store you bought it and say it was defective, made noises and you smelt something burning after you had everything set up and already installed an OS, leave out the part about not using standoffs. Use stand-offs on the next one and report to us then. The slowdowns and stuttering is most likely some sort of application running in the background taking up resources that you want for games. A lot of antivirus programs are notorious for using more resources (cpu usage) than they really need and they are always doing stupid checks (this coming from the guy who refuses to stop using Norton), but most of those useless functions can be turned off. How many monitors are you using, more than one will slow things way down even if you are only gaming on one.

There's such a long list of things that can cause the OS to bog down that it's nearly impossible to diagnose over the internet without being at the PC. I would check what programs you have installed and see if any of them are set to check for updates automatically, I dislike auto update anything.

The fact that your PC powers on says it's not toast, but I personally would use it, I'd try and return it if possible or RMA it if returning isn't an option.

The board was at an angle leading to the I/O panel. Pictures would no longer help because after finding out i needed standoffs i installed.

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it has been over 30 days( 36 to be exact) since i bought the parts, so i thought i would be able to return it for a replacement. And i do use norton that came with the mobo software.

I am running 2 monitors. 1 900p with 60 refresh rate another at 1080p with a 144 refrsh rate. And what if i cannot find the antistatic bag the mobo came with? What would be a good thermal paste too reapply for the h100i? How long would and RMA take and what would i say about the board since it post?

The anti static bag might be a problem, cause they can come back and say it was damaged beyond repair if it's not sent in one, they should accept the RMA. Just tell them all that is needed, it posted and seemed to work fine until one day you thought you could smell something burning and this squealing noise started up, you turned it off and tried to find the source but no luck. Take lots of pictures of the MB in as high quality as you can with the best camera you have, up close and personal pictures, send them to MSI if possible. The time it takes all depends on what's wrong with it, could be from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. I am guessing you game on the 1080p monitor, so that 900p is a low enough res it shouldn't slow down the 980, or at least I wouldn't think it would. Could always unplug the 900p and see how it responds there. I run a 4K and 1080p monitor, game on the 4k (normally in 1440p) and it's pretty smooth on most games with dual 290X's. Norton was a big culprit of stuttering for me, that and I run all AMD (I'm hurt from the get go).

You could try calling the store you bought it from to see if they have a bag or call MSI and see if they will send one to you before you do the RMA, most likely they will tell you to contact the store you purchased form. I learned a valuable lesson just a couple of days ago, keep the boxes the gear came in and don't throw away the static bags cause if you need to RMA something it's a pain to find them, I tossed my GPU bags and had to find them online, they are cheap but you have to buy them in lots of 100 or 1000, so they aren't as cheap, I don't have any that would fit the MB but 100 that will fit a GPU.

I wish I had better news, but with out more info there's not much anyone here can do. Have you tried HWMonitor to see if all the voltages look ok? I don't know much about those boards, but I imagine if you used HWMonitor, took a screenshot and posted it up here someone could tell you if the voltages were ok or not, that would be a start at least.

legionairegreen said:

And what if i cannot find the antistatic bag the mobo came with?

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If you can't fine the antistatic bag the MB came in, then you will need to find a electronices store or computer store and get 1, if you can't find a store, you can goto Digi-Key and order 1. Make sure the bag is 2 inch's (5.08 cm) bigger length and width wise, like if the MB is 12(30.48cm) x 9(22.86cm), get a bag 14(35.56cm) x 12(30.48cm).

legionairegreen to the forum.. I'm just going to see if I have everything straight here, correct me if I'm wrong on any of these points:

You mounted the motherboard without standoffs in the case. Was the Pc running as you would expect at this time or did you test with XTU because it wasn't running well?

You thought the temps were too hot with the stock cooler, which 80c is not BTW and purchased a H100i heatsink. When mounting it you put the pump connector on the wrong pins? You likely shorted something and that is what you smelled.

How is the motherboard mounted now, do you have standoffs installed?

The motherboard is installed with standoffs now. What incited me to do this was, i tried remounting the gpu and saw the the gpu was pushed down to the case on on side to met the screw hole. My parent helped me build it, i must have overlooked that. After the reading more i found out that the reason was that my board was at an angle instead of flat and that i needed standoffs to make it was flat. I unplugged everything and made sure that i remembered exactly each sata port was, then installed standoffs on each mounting hole. At first hours after I built it i thought my temps were a bit to high especially when playing games so I tested it with intel xtreme tuning and found my cpu reaching above 80.I then got a hyper 12 evo and then my max temperatures were still reaching near 80c even after remounting it five times and reapplying thermal paste. I read that it could be a problem with a cpu so i returned my cpu and got a replacement. However since i did not want to go back here since it was a long drive i also got a cooler that i knew a friend had success in using. After that i decided to get a h100i cooler to see if that resolved the issue. As sated after incorrectly plugging in the pump i used intel processor daignostic to see if my cpu was okay and it passed the test. To test the temps i then ran Intel xtreme tuning to see if the cooler was doing its job. It never passed 64c on a 2 hour test. Spent to long figuring out my temp issue that I soon found another issue which were the stutters in game, which seems to be do to loading and random system stutters at times. I also found the my 980 was not achieving the right amount of fps as it should in games which caused me to remount it.

And to add what I mean is that i plugged the 3 pin connector to the right 3 pins instead of the left 3 pins of the fan connector, because the manual had a different board which called for the left 3.

Ok well this is what I would do, I would start by doing what t1nm4n suggested and unplug the lower resolution monitor and see how the game performs. If it still stutters then I would do a driver wipe and re install the drivers.

I doubt there is anything wrong with the Cpu though there might be something wrong with the board due to you mounting it without the standoffs and/or plugging the 3 pin the wrong way. Since it is up and running and the computer store found no issues when testing it. Start with what is suggested above and report back.

If this helps but the open hardware monitor does not read my board however



i unplugged the monitor and i still have stutters and slowdowns in my games.

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how do you perform i driver sweep. Do i just do a clean install? Or do i need a special program to do it?

Try installing the newest Nvidia drivers and when it goes to install it, there is a box where it's says perform a "clean install". Check that box and install the drivers and see what happens.

WhitehawkEQ said:

If you can't fine the antistatic bag the MB came in, then you will need to find a electronices store or computer store and get 1, if you can't find a store, you can goto Digi-Key and order 1. Make sure the bag is 2 inch's (5.08 cm) bigger length and width wise, like if the MB is 12(30.48cm) x 9(22.86cm), get a bag 14(35.56cm) x 12(30.48cm).

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I needed you last week, I could only find where to buy them in bulk.

@legionairegreen I'm not seeing any voltages, I have had this happen to me sometime when I start HWMonitor, I just restart it after all the programs have finished loading, I think it's just a glitch where the program can't access what it's looking for and skips it. Should look more like this.



I didn't really think that unplugging the second monitor would do much, the GPU you have is OP for 1080p and should be able to easily push another 1080p monitor without issue. The driver sweep is a utility that will scan your system for unused or outdated drivers that could be causing conflicts throughout your hardware. I've only used one once and I'm pretty sure I made some wrong selections cause I screwed things up, but that's what I get for playin' around. I wouldn't think putting the 3pin connector for the pump hurt anything, you just put +12v on the ground, the ground on the rpm sensor and the rpm sensor on the PWM lead, so there wasn't any voltage of significance going through your pump, if it works now I would hazard to say it's ok.

Ok This is the updated HWmonitor recordings

i still seem to get a loading stutter. It seems the stutter occurs when new assets are loaded. I tried the games both on the ssd and hdd with the same results. I noticed the stutter happens when either new enemies enter the screen an effect happens like blood splatter from being attacked, or using a spell. This problem occurs in games i have played The Witcher 3, Tochlight 2, Fallout NV, Skyrim, europa universalis 4 i get stutters even on speed 1, civilization 5, metro 2033 redux, metro last light redux, and borderlands 2. This still occurs even after i clean installed.

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To add the stutter is accompanied by a frame drop. Going from 70 to 34 back to 70, or going from 120 to 50 back to 120 in a sec.

If it could be system resources here is a picture of my task manager

You need to wipe the SSD using the ATA secure erase method.

RJARRRPCGP said:

You need to wipe the SSD using the ATA secure erase method.

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Please, elaborate how this will help his problem at all...

I would def do a driver wipe with this http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html in safe mode just like recommended and then reinstall the drivers.The fact that you bsod'd when installing the drivers says something, don't know what. Uninstall the normal way and then use this program to wipe.

As far as booing up faster you can adjust some BIOS settings to make it start to boot windows faster.

Also I stuck a fan in the wrong way on a fan controller and it smoked but still works fine, motherboard a bit more sensitive.