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Fried PSU - Motherboard Still /good?

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noname2020x

Member
Joined
Jul 21, 2011
A buddy of mine had his PSU fry. The connector on his mobo melted a little, but he seems to have removed most of the residue. I figured he should justbuy a new motherboard and not risk losing his parts, but I thought I would see what you guys think in an attempt to try and save $70 or so.
 

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I say what do you have to lose give it a try and use a good and safe PSU that will shut off if there is a problem.
 
The pin on the motherboard will need to be cleaned. If it's dirty at all you'll get a bad connection just like what happened this time and the results will be identical.
 
I'll see if I clan clean it off for him. Any tips on how to make the pin spotless? Should I try to solder it a little and get the gunk out like that or would be too hot and melt more than the pin solder?
 
this

looks like high powered gpu's where used in the system.
And their own +12V connectors weren't plugged in. The fact the 24-pin connector on the motherboard is burnt on one of its +12V lines and probably on the +12V line next to it supports that.

I'll see if I clan clean it off for him. Any tips on how to make the pin spotless? Should I try to solder it a little and get the gunk out like that or would be too hot and melt more than the pin solder?
Carbon remover chemicals, like PB Blaster, Kroil, or even carburetor/throttle body spray may help, but they can damage plastic (probably not the white nylon connector body but maybe the circuit board material). You can't solder the contacts without them being clean first, but I wouldn't solder because the contact will likely be poor.
 
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GPUs won't even start if their PCIe power plugs aren't plugged in. One of the three ground wires in a 6P plug (and two, in the 8P) are sense wires.

The motherboard plug typically dies either due to a bad connection, or to using multiple high end GPUs and OCing. Each PCIe slot (16x) is allowed 75w from the motherboard, if there are a few of them demanding that 75w the ATX24P gets overloaded.

It's fairly rare these days, but in the Fermi / X58 era EVGA SLI boards did this a lot.
Something to dissolve the carbon like LM said, plus maybe some gentle scraping with a small srewdriver might work.
 
Will WD-40 work for cleaning the carbon? If not, what is the cheapest thing that will, because I don't have any of those products?
 
Will WD-40 work for cleaning the carbon? If not, what is the cheapest thing that will, because I don't have any of those products?

Use electrical contact cleaner - Radio Shack carries it. Make sure you cycle the connector a few times after spraying it on to complete the cleaning. Maybe repeat the exercise a couple times as well to make sure.

Well that's interesting, that's a new one on me. I'll remember that.
How high?

It would have to be pretty high, with a fair bit of current draw to go with it.
 
So say 100w of draw (1GPU, some mobo stuff), and well over spec (not transients, but Hz-KHz stuff) ripple?
 
Yeah, it would have to be well over spec ripple. Rapid changes in voltage at high current = heat.
 
Got it up and running. Picked all of the gunk out and actually sanded the pin with 400 grit paper a tiny bit to remove the carbon, then dusted it with air and cleaned it with a little alcohol. Any good tools to make sure everything is up to par? I checked the temps on HW monitor and everything looks fine but AUXTIN at 128C. I did a little research on it and it seems like its generally an error, but is there a way I can check?

Thanks
 
Run a CPU+GPU load and feel the connector.
If it's warmer than the surrounding board, you still have issues.
 
I've seen a PSU kill a motherboard and then see that dead board kill a working PSU...

I'd attempt to see if the motherboard still works if you are willing to risk loosing the working PSU...

As for temps... use an infrared thermometer to see which areas in the board are overheating. check around the CPU, northbridge, southbridge, RAM and any mosfets/caps near the PCIe 16x slot.
 
I checked the mobo temps with my ir thermometer and they range between 86 (near the cpu and usb ports etc.) and 98 (near ram and psu plug in) . Is that within range?
 
The connector itself is what would overheat, measure that, then measure it again with a solid CPU+GPU load.
 
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