Fried MOBO

My motherboard listed in my sig (ds3l) died a painful death last night. I had installed a TRUE and a new Q6600.

Things were going well, and I had the Q6600 overclocked to 3.6 GHz, but I was having difficulty getting in prime95 stable for more than an hour or so. The temps were good, at like 60C load, so I bumped up the VCore to 1.525. The readings in cpu-z were 1.4V under load, and again, the load temps were in the low 60's.

I was running the mch and fsb voltages the same as I have been for years. The difference was that I had never taken the board up to as high of VCore before.

Everything seemed cool, so I set it to prime 95 overnight. When I came in here this morning the computer was off and the room stunk like fried electronics. Upon further inspection it looks like the voltage regulator on the motherboard caught fire. It is covered in black soot and so is the motherboard tray.

I've taken the computer out of the den and have been testing the other components one by one. So far the CPU and RAM check out. I'm getting ready to test the video card and the HD's.

I'm getting ready to post some pics in about 10 minutes, and I'd like some feedback as to what might have gone wrong so I don't repeat it again. This was the first time I have used a HS with a backplate, and although I think I did it right, please use the pics to make sure.

I looked around the area and there wasn't any apparent contact between the MB and the MB tray.

My guess is that this MB just couldn't handle those higher voltages provided to the CPU. The Vdroop on the thing was crazy (>.1V), and I was trying to compensate for it by upping the voltages.

Thanks for the help.

Sometimes unexplained things happen no matter how careful you are. All you can do now at this point is RMA the board. Hopefully nothing else fried and you'll have your rig up and running in no time.

I remember back during the socket A (462) days I purchased a brand new ABit NF7s 2.0 I was air cooling at the time and just put everything together and fired the rig up no sweat. I was running a Barton @ 2.5Ghz (which is a nice oc at that time) with zero issues and with cool temps. I decided to watch a DVD before I commence playing some Max Payne.

In less than 15 minutes after potting it all together and running it, something goes bang, pc shuts off and the smell of fried electronics fill the air. After careful inspection the bios chip was missing! There was no bios chip and no bios chip socket. The whole thing just exploded. I found pieces of it inside the case. I had no choice but to RMA my new board. Luckily nothing else died.

Pics

here are some pics of this event

Thanks for that Nebulous. This'll be the first thing I've fried.

I'm looking at the procedures for RMAing this thing atm. I've got the serial number for the thing and it is still under warranty. Woowho. I'm not sure if they will try to get it of it due to the electrical nature of the thing.

# Physical Damages which include, but not limited to, the following:

o Unauthorized modifications
o Misuse, neglect or improper assembly
o Transport damages due to improper packaging or carrier
o Burns resulting from faulty or failed electric power

Click to expand...

The PSU is working fine ATM. I have it hooked up to this system I am typing this on.

Do you think this will fly if I send it to them?

More pics:

Update: I've tested all the components and everything is working fine. Except the Mobo of course. Woowho, I got lucky there!

Still not sure if they will refuse this as an electrical problem. Anyone have any experience with something like this?

Hmm, here is a picture of another ds3l catching fire in the same spot
http://static.overclock.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/12977

Burningcpu, you almost lived up to your forum handle, huh? Maybe we should change it to burningmobo for ya!

j/k man.

I had my DS3L let go too, but not nearly as bad looking as yours let go. I definitely have 1 fet fried and if you turn the mobo over, you can see that the pcb itself has turned browner than normal all round the power circuitry area around the socket, much the same place as yours smoked at. And the circumstances yours burned up are the exact same as mine, including overclocking a Q6600 to 3.6 with 1.6 v vcore set in bios (I was testing heatsinks and making as much heatload as possible). I think these cheap boards just can't handle the power needed to push a quad, at least the way they come from Gigabyte. Maybe they would hold up better if the fets and chokes had heatsinks on them.

burningcpu said:

Update: I've tested all the components and everything is working fine. Except the Mobo of course. Woowho, I got lucky there!

Still not sure if they will refuse this as an electrical problem. Anyone have any experience with something like this?

Click to expand...

You were overclocking at a high CPU voltage. Do you really think they should honor the warranty?

Keep in mind that the first thing they are going to look at is the BIOS chip.

That is a good point renegade. I'm going to tell them what I was doing when the board fried and go from there. If they say no way because I was ocing, then that is what it is. It won't be a large loss as the board is getting pretty outdated.

mud: Haha, burningmobo, funny stuff. I actually hadn't thought about that.

I'm glad to see that I hadn't pulled a noob mistake or something. I had been pretty beer-buzzed last night when I was working on it.

Thanks for the info on what happened to your MB, Mudd.

I just upgraded to a i7-870 from the same board. Used they are going for 30-50 on ebay so it's not a great loss. I never was happy with the GA-EP35-DS3L for overclocking. It was inexpensive and worked well at stock speeds. I liked the ABIT IP-35e better but it wound up frying itself and the PSU (or maybe it was the other way around). It was a frys refurb and was well past the 90 day guarantee but it was like 50$

This might be a time to reconsider your options for a total makeover of your system

I thought about it but instead bought a used MB (Asus Maximus II P45) from the classies:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16813131319

All my other components are solid so I'll stick with 775 for a little longer.

Next large upgrade (probably this summer) will be to i5 or i7.

If he was like me, the only thing that fried was the mobo. I was able to swap out to a P5Q Pro board and continue my testing. As for the DS3L board, it also helped me repair a P35-DS3R board that had fried the 4 pin 12v connector on the mobo. I desoldered the one on the DS3L and soldered it back to the DS3-R and now I have yet another spare cheap mobo.

Haha, sounds like muddocktor should join the computing equivalent of junkyard wars.

LOL, I've done the same thing resurrecting the dead It pays to have a cemetery of dead parts to bring others back to life.

Hey burningcpu, Gigabyte will replace it as it's some sort of defect. Glad all the other parts are saved. I got in on the other Asus Maximus II P45

Haha, ya I laughed at that when Giggles posted that. That thing has a huge heat sink on those voltage regulators, so hopefully I'll have better luck with that one.

That is good news about the RMA. They sent the the RMA email so I'm on the process of filing.

I have one of those horrid seagate 1.5TB HD's that I need to RMA on top of it. I just haven't gotten around to it since it started its clicking and delayed data access. That was a few months ago, but I hate digging into my file server because it runs ubuntu and every time I switch around the sata ports it destroys my SAMBA setup and I have to edit fstab? Something like that. I'm sure there is a more permanent fix but I haven't found it yet.

I'm getting kind of lengthy because I am waiting for 2 students to finish answering their lab test, and I don't have a lot else to do but stare at them. And I'm trying to avoid creeping out my students heh.

Got an email from Gigabyte today saying they have shipped a replacement board. I wrote on the RMA form the conditions when it fried, and they fixed it. Pretty cool.

The email said it was a PCB burnout.

I didn't post any pictures of it, but the flames went pretty high. Turns out the TRUE had black soot and burn marks about halfway up the fins.

I'm glad Gigabyte was cool about the thing.

burningcpu said:

Got an email from Gigabyte today saying they have shipped a replacement board. I wrote on the RMA form the conditions when it fried, and they fixed it. Pretty cool.

The email said it was a PCB burnout.

I didn't post any pictures of it, but the flames went pretty high. Turns out the TRUE had black soot and burn marks about halfway up the fins.

I'm glad Gigabyte was cool about the thing.

Click to expand...

That really speaks volumes about gigabyte. Just because of how they treated you, my next mobo is going to be a gigabyte =D

Just need to find a good 775 board for my Q6600. The intel boards I've been dinking around with just wont cut it. No OC. Flaky bios problems, always running hot...dying a lot....

anyway.

Thinking of making my next computer an AMD. I've been dying to try out a Phenom II....just need to get over my prejudice against them for their anti-linux mentality....going to be hard.

This thread makes me want to increase my voltages even higher.
Thanks Gigabyte!

Ah I think it should be a sig quote..

The words of every gigabyte board owner I have seen with any longevity.

"Giagabyte rocks... best board I have ever owned... cant wait till it comes back from RMA"

:O I might have a second Giga coming inbound soon hope I aint jinxing myself