Issue involving standoffs on b450m max build / aerocool cylon rgb case

[magicnut]

Hello to start with I am a novice computer builder , with this being my first build
I have used a old 2600k for many years (since 2011)which was prebuild from cyberpower and I did upgrades myself involving changing gpu / installing ssd /adding ram etc but I never built a full system until this.

My specifications are as follows:
Aerocool Cylon RGB Mid tower
MSI Tomahawk b450m MAX MOTHERBOARD
Ryzen 3600x
Rx 5700 XFX
1tb NVME WD Black
Corsair cx650m

Now lets talk about the issue:
I assembled the computer myself using tools at hand , the case came with 4 standoffs installed.
As mentioned the mobo model is tomahawk b450m max (FULL ATX MOBO , on aerocool cylon rgb midtower case.
Its a full atx mobo that has 9 standoff holes.
I installed the other 5 standoffs in my case using some pliers (which tool btw is more appropriate to use? I have read that you can just screw them in by hand but this is impossible since they dont turn due to too much friction requiring some force).
After the standoffs were installed I have pressed in the io shield as snug as I could and proceded to install the motherboard..But to my avail it was impossible to align the standoffs so that screws can be actually screwed in in all the holes! The are simply EVER SO SLIGHTLY(although I SHOULD POINT OUT the margin that the standoffs are off vary on all the 3 missaligned standoffs. 2 are off very slightly maybe less than a mm the third one is off i'd say almost 2mm) off so that the screw is unable to be tightened in.
I was able to screw in 6 out of the 9 standoffs that the board is suppose to sit on and the other 3 just dont align.
I have tried about 3 times to reseat the motherboard , press the io shield in etc and the result is all about the same.
Then I decided to just complete my build using the 6 available standoffs that the screws went into.
Upon completing my build , the computer booted absolutely fine on first try , so I went ahead and installed windows and I am using it now.
There were no issues running it , but I just want to ask the following questions regarding this issue:
1). How big of a problem could this be in the long term and is it relatively safe to run the computer with the missing standoffs?
2). What could I try to resolve this problem and what would be the source of this problem? I should note that one of the standoffs that is misaligned ( only by fraction of milimiter but its enough not to go in ) is one of the preinstalled ones on the case.
Thanks.

- - - Auto-Merged Double Post - - -

BTW here is a photograph of the situation involving the standoffs and description how much off they are by.

- - - Auto-Merged Double Post - - -

https://imgur.com/a/Etor4HO

 

[torin3]

I can't say for sure, but if the stand-offs were the right thread, they should relatively easily turn in for most of their depth until you start shouldering them to the plate. I suspect that your stand-offs were of a slightly different thread and you were essentially tapping them into the plate. Do they look angled out of perpendicular to the plate? That may be why they aren't fitting.

But given that you aren't having a problem, and unless you were having something heavy on the motherboard that might flex / warp it, I'd say you are good to go now.

Also, welcome to the forum!

Edit: there is an edit function, but you might have to be a member for a certain number of posts before it gets turned on. I'm not an admin/mod here, so I couldn't say for sure. Maybe one will chime in.

 

[magicnut]

Also: The motherboard model is tomahawk b450 max not b450m max if it caused any confusion , I wrote by mistake but theres no edit option here..

- - - Auto-Merged Double Post - - -

I can't say for sure, but if the stand-offs were the right thread, they should relatively easily turn in for most of their depth until you start shouldering them to the plate. I suspect that your stand-offs were of a slightly different thread and you were essentially tapping them into the plate. Do they look angled out of perpendicular to the plate? That may be why they aren't fitting.

But given that you aren't having a problem, and unless you were having something heavy on the motherboard that might flex / warp it, I'd say you are good to go now.

Also, welcome to the forum!

Thanks for your reply , that's also what I was thinking.
I have some questions for you: given that one of the standoffs that didn't fit was a preinstalled standoff does it not go in because the wrong threaded standoffs are perhaps slightly shifting the mobo?
Also what tool is appropriate to use for mounting in standoffs in the holes?
And also do you think my current configuriation doesn't contain anything particularly "heavy" for instance that graphics card?

 

[torin3]

The heavy that I was thinking of was a large CPU heatsink made mostly of copper weighing a couple of pounds. Given you have a low profile heatsink, and one video card, I don't think you'll have any problem with it.

 

[magicnut]

The heavy that I was thinking of was a large CPU heatsink made mostly of copper weighing a couple of pounds. Given you have a low profile heatsink, and one video card, I don't think you'll have any problem with it.

Thanks very much torin for your amazing , swift and informative reply ��

 

[trents]

Installing the standoffs with pliers is fine. Just don't torque them so hard that you strip the threads. Neither do you want them loose as this will cause an issue when trying to remove the screws that insert into them. You just want them snug.

Make sure you remove all the unused standoffs. You don't want them grounding out on the electrical traces of the motherboard's underside.

I/O shields have little . . . (I'm not sure what to call them) but for lack of a better word, "springs" around each hole on the motherboard side that push up against the motherboard's I/O ports. You have to push the motherboard up against these springs to depress them enough to get the motherboard I/O ports to seat in the I/O shield holes and also to line up with the standoffs.

Otherwise, this is very strange scenario which I have never run into. Makes me wonder if the standoff holes in the motherboard tray were drilled in the wrong places by he case manufacturer. Have you found any complaints about this on the net? It would be interesting to try mounting the motherboard in another case to see if the standoffs lined up.

Having said all that, I would only be concerned about stress from a heavy GPU or CPU cooler if some of the mounting points are not being secured and be careful when snapping in RAM if that area isn't supported well.

 

[Zerileous]

I agree with trents, having unused standoffs is asking for a problem. Using only 6/9 standoffs (especially if only tho bottom row is omitted) is unlikely to cause problems.

 

[magicnut]

Installing the standoffs with pliers is fine. Just don't torque them so hard that you strip the threads. Neither do you want them loose as this will cause an issue when trying to remove the screws that insert into them. You just want them snug.

Make sure you remove all the unused standoffs. You don't want them grounding out on the electrical traces of the motherboard's underside.

I/O shields have little . . . (I'm not sure what to call them) but for lack of a better word, "springs" around each hole on the motherboard side that push up against the motherboard's I/O ports. You have to push the motherboard up against these springs to depress them enough to get the motherboard I/O ports to seat in the I/O shield holes and also to line up with the standoffs.

Otherwise, this is very strange scenario which I have never run into. Makes me wonder if the standoff holes in the motherboard tray were drilled in the wrong places by he case manufacturer. Have you found any complaints about this on the net? It would be interesting to try mounting the motherboard in another case to see if the standoffs lined up.

Having said all that, I would only be concerned about stress from a heavy GPU or CPU cooler if some of the mounting points are not being secured and be careful when snapping in RAM if that area isn't supported well.

I had seen for instance this review right here

. I think this person had a simular type of problem with mine.
As I said the standoffs in my case are only *marginally* misaligned , I'd say the margin is around 1mm off except for the one on the bottom left which is perhaps 1.5-2mm or so.
I think I would just leave the build as is because I don't think the standoffs as of now come in contact with any of the board's circuitry and ground any electrical traces since they are ALMOST in the location they are suppose to be if I understand your reply correctly .
Thanks for all the replies.

- - - Auto-Merged Double Post - - -

I had seen for instance this review right here

. I think this person had a simular type of problem with mine.
As I said the standoffs in my case are only *marginally* misaligned , I'd say the margin is around 1mm off except for the one on the bottom left which is perhaps 1.5-2mm or so.
I think I would just leave the build as is because I don't think the standoffs as of now come in contact with any of the board's circuitry and ground any electrical traces since they are ALMOST in the location they are suppose to be if I understand your reply correctly .
Thanks for all the replies.

Edit:this was the review I seen

https://imgur.com/a/6c4K0LE

 

[trents]

But the other part of what I was saying was make sure your board is shoved far enough forward to so that the I/O ports are full seated in the I/O shield.

 

[magicnut]

Thanks , yes I've shoved the board back as far as possible . Btw I've glanced over the temperatures on my cpu and in cinebench or cpu-z stress it hits 84c . Is that passable for a stock cooler?

 

[trents]

The temps you report are typical for the stock cooler when the CPU is not overclocked. There may also be a temp offset added to the actual temp for this CPU. On my 2700x there is a 10c temp offset. AMD started doing this with the Ryzen platform in order to get more consistency with bios fan curves. You can check this in HWInfo64. CPU (Tctl) reports the offset temp.

 

[Robert17]

Perhaps your case's MB tray is tapped for metric standoffs and you are trying to install imperial size?

 

[DaveB]

Then I decided to just complete my build using the 6 available standoffs that the screws went into.
Upon completing my build , the computer booted absolutely fine on first try , so I went ahead and installed windows and I am using it now.
There were no issues running it , but I just want to ask the following questions regarding this issue:
1). How big of a problem could this be in the long term and is it relatively safe to run the computer with the missing standoffs?
2). What could I try to resolve this problem and what would be the source of this problem? I should note that one of the standoffs that is misaligned ( only by fraction of milimiter but its enough not to go in ) is one of the preinstalled ones on the case.

Just buy some of these plastic motherboard standoffs and insert them in the holes that don't line up. They will provide support should you press down on the motherboard when inserting RAM, a GPU card or SATA connector.

 

[trents]

Good suggestion, DaveB

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

When installing the MB, as you put each screw in don't tighten till all the screws are in then tighten them down.


p.s. a 3/16 nut driver works well for installing the standoffs. If the standoffs are metric, use 5mm.

 

[DaveB]

Good suggestion, DaveB

I always have a bag of them around. I twice setup dual LGA 2011 Xeon motherboards in large ATX cases where only 3 of the motherboard holes lined up with the case's standoff locations. So I used a half dozen of these, several of which were twist tied to the case a various locations to supplement the 3 screws. Worked great even with two large CM Hyper 212 coolers attached to the motherboard.

 

[magicnut]

OK the fun is over with this build , a first problem has finally arose ..
Opened up dota 2 and about 10 seconds in screen went blank. Then some type of artifact or a corrupt line of some sort flashed for a few milliseconds and the computer rebooted.
Worked good for the first 2 weeks. I can't 100% confirm that this issue is related to the standoff situation or this is a seperate problem but I will try 100% now to rebuild the mobo and set it in right.
Any suggestions isolating the issue?

https://imgur.com/a/luZZiqo

 

[trents]

The first thing you need to do is pull the motherboard, PSU, GPU, and the system drive out of the box and build the system on a tabletop for testing to eliminate any issues with the case such as ground-outs.

 

[magicnut]

Having investigated the issue a bit on my own , I had came to an assumption this may be ram related with the ram being unstable at its 3200 xmp.
https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8...-turbine-ddr4-3200-16gb-kit-review/index.html < thats the kit i have.
I had removed the auto xmp in the uefi and the ram set to its 2666 stock speed , yesterday the computer worked fine again and handled 3 hours of world of tanks + 3 hours of dota without a hitch so I have my fingers crossed and hope the issue is really gone.Also I ran furmark for a few minutes and it handled that too so its usually a good sign. When my gtx 670 went toast (back in 2016 ish) it crashed 30 seconds into the furmark but here no evidence.

 

[magicnut]

OK I have some good and bad news to report:
I can confirm the issue was NOT with the xmp instability of the ram.
Today the same thing happened again namely (as I mentioned) screen went black , then a strip flashed and the pc rebooted.
However here's the good news:
I decided to fix the standoff situation once and for all , I took everything out (gpu , mobo etc) , then I thoroughly investigated the situation causing the misalignment.
I then took a hammer and tapped the standoffs that seemed to be going slightly out and straightened them. I was able to put the mobo on all standoffs.
The computer booted up again and I am hoping that this did something positive for the problem.

Edit:

https://imgur.com/a/IwDP48p

Ill report if the issue returns with the standoffs now properly in.
UPDATED 3/26:
No problems in about 5 days now after the rebuild some good signs