Fire!!

Well actually it was a long time ago so nobody run over to my house and pour water in my computer.

I had a fire in one of my cases, a light switch next to the motherboard shorted out and burned the whole area by the bottom PCI slot.

My question is how likely is the fire damage -- it blacked parts of all nearby PCI cards and even the V card a little -- to have damaged those card functionally. How likely are those cards to damage other components (ie mobo) if tested in a working mobo. What about the CPU and RAM?

I give it an even 50-50 at best.
if you get a magnifying glass you can probably do a once over and see what is actually damaged.

Smoke while potentially harmful can be carefully cleaned up.

The difficulty you run into now is how do you test the components to see if they actually work without blowing out what you know is working -- and the short answer you don't ever know for sure.

I would first take all the cards out of the system and clean them up -- CAREFULLY -- I have use rubbing alcohol in the past with some pretty good success, but i know Radio shack has some electronics cleaning products. Check the bottom of the CPU for burn marks and the memory pins as well.

Pull all the cards out -- ALL OF THEM yes the video card too
Disconnect the drives too.

All you want is to test the core components and see if you have a working MB/CPU/Memory. The rest of the stuff you can add one at a time and test.

Boot the system -- listen for POST beeps -- If you don't get anything like the power supply kicking on or beeps or fans spinning your MB/CPU is probably gone. Memory in my experience is the one thing that is most likely to survive a melt down. This is good time to have a post card handy.

Then put the video card back in and see if that works.
then the floppy drive
HD
ETC....

THIS NOT WITHOUT DANGER -- any one of these could kill the system if they are damaged in the right way.

I can't stress enough that are no Guarantees with this.

If you have things like post cards/ slot testers / CPU socket Testers/ Volt Meters -- you can lessen the chance of having a bad day but you can never fully eliminate it.

Go slow -- write down your results at each phase -- I now that sounds silly but when ppl start asking you questions you will have the results in front of you. I can't tell how many times i ended up restesting somehting cause i was unsure of the results.


FINAL NOTE: This is very shortened version of how to do this -- I skipped over lots of areas that should be looked at. I could write a book on this stuff alone -- Well, actually I have, but you guys don't know that.

anyway good luck -- let us know how it goes.

T

I'd agree with TidyBowl, and I think he pretty much covered it. As I can't see your actual cards, I'd thoroughly clean them, then inspect the components for damage. If any look toasted, I'd be hesitant to test it in one of my good boards.

You could always get a cheap mobo & proc from the classifieds section & use that to test.

Was the fire actually flaming or was is just a lot of smoke? If it was just smoke, then clean the components with alcohol or other electrical cleaner (from RadioShack). Then, try TidyBowls routine. If there was actual flame and heat, then test only parts that appear to have no heat damage.

Fire!

Godzilla said:

Fire!

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dude, this is the 2nd spam post i've seen from u today. U might wanna stop or you will get a 3 day vacation.


If you have expensive hardware, you might want to buy a cheapo motherboard to test all of this in, so you don't fry your good components.

TidyBowl, what book did you write on this?

Godzilla said:

Fire!

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Welcome to the No Classifieds Blue's

Don't hold your breath waiting to see the classifieds at 100 posts.

The majority of your post count are Smileys and spamming to 100 is not allowed and your wasting your time.

One time at work I applied 120V AC to a PCI I/O card designed to operate on 5V DC. Needless to say a few components happened to literally explode. What happened was the sensitive integrated circuits couldn't handle the current and heated excessively from the INSIDE of the plastic package. I would do a quick check on all of the IC's to make sure they do not exhibit any external damage, which they most likely will not. What WILL most likely have been damaged are wire traces and capacitors. Clean up the boards and check those over with a magnifying glass. I would not worry about a damaged board ruining your motherboard.

my monitor, epox 8kha+, and Delta 150CFM fan (120mm) have each caught on fire on separate occasions lol... guess thats the price you pay for tweakin stuff

There was a big spark and lots of smoke. All the components within about an inch melted off the mobo. I found a litle metal can in the case, and some fuzzy stuff. I suspect this is the remains of an exploded capacitor. An IC also fell off, and was so brittle and blistered I broke it in half with my fingers.

The closest PCI card was the modem and it has one disk capacitor that is clearly burned/permanently blackened. The only other burn marks are on the metal tabs of the PCI slot cover integrated into each component.

I guess I'll risk the CPU, RAM, and drives, but trash everything else, (modem, soundcard, and GeForce2). For the price, perhaps I should just replace the CPU and RAM too? We're talking $100 to replace Vs slight risk to test.