Motherboard Failure

[Reliant]

I have a 2 day old motherboard. I saw flames, smelled nasty, and it shut down. Opening the case I see that one of the capacitors up top is sideways and there are scorch marks. Newegg won't RMA it, making me go to Asus. Asus says I might get charged if they deem it "customer cause", which I can say it's not.

How likely is it that it took my CPU/RAM/Video/SSD with it? If it killed the other stuff, I don't want to go through the proccess of fighting everyone on RMA either at Newegg or Intel/Sapphire, etc, since my process is already bad along this road today.

 

[Rvenger]

Ram and CPU = Probable

What kind of power supply are you running with it?

 

[Binky]

Capacitor is sideways? It seems unlikely that heat/flame could physically move a capacitor. You might be out of luck if they claim it was caused by physical damage.

 

[Ike0069]

I had a PSU go bad several years ago and it took out the MB, one of two sticks of RAM, and a PCI card. Other stick of RAM, VC, and processor were all okay. As were the HDD's and CD Burner.
My guess would be it took something with it, but no way to know wihtout testing each piece. Sorry to hear that as I know when crap like that happens I literally feel ill.

 

[Rvenger]

Capacitor is sideways? It seems unlikely that heat/flame could physically move a capacitor. You might be out of luck if they claim it was caused by physical damage.

The can probably blew and melted sideways.

 

[Reliant]

The can probably blew and melted sideways.

It's what I'm guessing. As for my PSU, I had an Antec Gamer 620W. I got the RMA going, but I won't know what, if anything, else got canned. I'm hoping nothing. It was going for 2 days without issues, and I had gamed plenty. When it died it was sitting idle at Windows desktop with nothing loaded. Since right now the only thing I KNOW is dead is the mobo, that's all I can do.

Let's hope it gets better, always sucks to drop good money to have something like this happen.

 

[Reliant]

In case anyone was curious I'll throw a pic below. Doesn't look like much, but it was at the time.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Reliant/mobo.jpg

 

[Reliant]

I had a PSU go bad several years ago and it took out the MB, one of two sticks of RAM, and a PCI card. Other stick of RAM, VC, and processor were all okay. As were the HDD's and CD Burner.
My guess would be it took something with it, but no way to know wihtout testing each piece. Sorry to hear that as I know when crap like that happens I literally feel ill.

I hear ya man, all the excitement of having it gone to after 1 day. Replaced with worry of wasting all that money and seeing what is broke next. It's all new, just praying to get anything dead replaced.

 

[Binky]

In case anyone was curious I'll throw a pic below. Doesn't look like much, but it was at the time.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Reliant/mobo.jpg

Pretty ugly. Don't touch it, send it to Asus and cross your fingers.

 

[Rvenger]

Wow, that cap blew hard! I would go to badcaps.net and post there to see if they might have some knowledge as to what happened.


Usually if its a PSU problem you will have burnt up VRMs. It looks to be a defective
cap to me. I would RMA that board and try again. Cross your fingers when you hit that power button!

 

[ronss]

they would probably replace it , unless you did something to the board that caused it...they can figure those things out pretty quick...they are not dummys. i had a motherboard that went bad, a power supply 20pin power connector , one pin melted and melted the 1 pin area on the 20 pin power connector on motherboard...gigabyte replaced it, but i believe it was my antec psu that caused all the problems. as for your parts, not sure, you just have to try them on a new motherboard.

 

[Reliant]

Wow, that cap blew hard! I would go to badcaps.net and post there to see if they might have some knowledge as to what happened.


Usually if its a PSU problem you will have burnt up VRMs. It looks to be a defective
cap to me. I would RMA that board and try again. Cross your fingers when you hit that power button!

That's the plan! It's already shipped out. Since it was just one cap, I'm guessing it was just defective. Poor luck. All the other hardware looked OK when I took it out, but won't know till I try again. If other stuff failed, I'll have to go through this all again, but again, hoping not. I'll throw out an update when I get the replacement and let you guys know, if interested.

Thanks for being my support group! This post was more for venting/support than anything horribly technical. Appreciate it.

 

[Ike0069]

In case anyone was curious I'll throw a pic below. Doesn't look like much, but it was at the time.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Reliant/mobo.jpg

While I'm not a EE, that looks like a bad cap that just "blew". Not sure a broken solder connection (from physical damage) would cause that. Hopefully ASUS will take care of you.

Since it appears to be isolated to the one area of the board, I think theres a chance that everything else is okay.

 

[Rvenger]

That's the plan! It's already shipped out. Since it was just one cap, I'm guessing it was just defective. Poor luck. All the other hardware looked OK when I took it out, but won't know till I try again. If other stuff failed, I'll have to go through this all again, but again, hoping not. I'll throw out an update when I get the replacement and let you guys know, if interested.

Thanks for being my support group! This post was more for venting/support than anything horribly technical. Appreciate it.

When I first built my Sandybridge 2 days later my power supply exploded. I mean it sounded like a gun went off in the room. Smoke went everywhere! That night, I went to officemax and luckily found an Antec Basiq 500watt on clearance for $45. Popped it in and the computer booted right up no problem. Hopefully your luck will be just as good.

 

[swgaspidey]

every body can say what they want that is not a user caused problem that was from a bad part I have seen stuff like that before on other eletronitics

 

[Reliant]

every body can say what they want that is not a user caused problem that was from a bad part I have seen stuff like that before on other eletronitics

Huh?

 

[Binky]

Huh?

I agree, although nobody has said much about user error since the pic was posted.

 

[bryanl]

In case anyone was curious I'll throw a pic below. Doesn't look like much, but it was at the time.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Reliant/mobo.jpg

Asus cut corners by using a cheap Taiwan Ap-Con capacitor by Apaq, rather than a higher quality Japanese product, and that's the second Ap-Con I've seen that failed on a fairly new Asus motherboard. Don't be surprised if Asus tries to void the warranty by accusing you of overclocking.

Do a credit card chargeback with Newegg since you obviously didn't tell them to ship a defective product.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Asus cut corners by using a cheap Taiwan Ap-Con capacitor by Apaq, rather than a higher quality Japanese product, and that's the second Ap-Con I've seen that failed on a fairly new Asus motherboard. Don't be surprised if Asus tries to void the warranty by accusing you of overclocking.

Do a credit card chargeback with Newegg since you obviously didn't tell them to ship a defective product.

How funny that the cheaper P67/Z68 Biostar mobos has better quality (Nippon-Chemicon) caps than Asus!

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=3172801&highlight=tp67b

 

[Reliant]

So I'll backfill details then give currents. The day that this all happened I called Newegg first, and they said due to the nature of the damage I'd have to RMA with Asus. So I called Asus, and the rep said that I'd need to send it in, but warned me that a lot of issues like this have been happening and that the RMA team has been deeming a LOT of these "customer caused", and not RMAing the mobos. He warned me to be ready for that. I sent it in. 2 weeks later I am told it's my fault, and no RMA, they send it back. I did nothing out of the norm, didn't even change a single bios setting from stock, so I was pretty put down.

At this point I ran to Fry's, found another Z68 board, just to see if anything else was fried. I HAD to know and the RMA window was about closed on all the other equipment I ordered at the time. (Side note the had like 5 ASUS ones but I wanted a different brand after this fiasco). I debated a Gigabyte or MSI board, but in the end the MSI board seemed like the better of the two.

Got home, plugged everything in, everything booted and worked. Thank God! It's been up and running for a week or so with no hiccups. (Knock on wood). At this point I gave Newegg another call, explained the situation, asked if there was anything they could do. They decided to issue me an exception and refunded me the cost of the original board, (don't usually do that for physical damage) which was very generous of them.

 

[pinkfloyd48]

Well let me tell you somthing about newegg. they suck now I tried to RMA brand new asus sabertooth mb to them because it would not boot up with my ram so i went to take out the third dimm of ram and the white tab lock broke and they said to bad send it to asus so now i dont have a mb and waiting newegg for them to send back so i can deal with Asus that could take another couple weeks. Newegg has gone downhill the last couple of years I think

 

[Kristijonas]

Reliant, which motherboard is this?

 

[bankster55]

@ Reliant

Let me guess - you have a CM 212+ HSF on the mobo that blew
Right?

 

[Reliant]

@ Reliant

Let me guess - you have a CM 212+ HSF on the mobo that blew
Right?

I'm sorry, what's that?

 

[bankster55]

CoolerMaster Heatsink Version 212 Plus