Just fried my Motherboard due to heating element failure..

[Ocbench]

Hi guys..

What a day.
I just bought a very nice A7N8X deluxe rev 2.0 board, and took it home to start modding. Well after approx 2 hours of soldering, (Vdd/Vdimm/Vcore) mod. I Start assembeling my system. Cutting all the tubing for my northbridge h20 and so on. And this took about an hour. Finally got my board running, and it was perfect :) or so i thought. After surfing the web for a little hour my systems suddenly crashed. OH DAMN, i thought, it must have short circut someplace on the motherboard. I check everything from top to bottom, and make sure my Prommy is correctly installed. I decided to take a little break and after about 20 min i finally decided to take it all out at go through it all, and it was absolutely soaked on the backside of the cpu. The hole socket was full of condensation water. Apparently the Heating element did not work anymore. But gee, what a way to find out.

So now i have to replace the heating element and the motherboard..
Guess it isn´t my day..

Best regards
Daniel Andrew Lowe

[migginz]

is it not covered by the proms warranty ?

[Ocbench]

I would think so.. I know the dealer, and I might just have to send it in. But still, I will have to do without it for a few days.

[JCviggen]

even if the heating element doesnt work the back plate could never collect more than a few drops inside if you applied the sealstring right and like it says in the manual m8... personally i never use the heating element and then the only place where you can possibly get any bit of condensation is on the back of the backplate itself because it gets cold...on the inside is just impossible when the sealstring is in place...maybe you forgot the 2 li,ps of sealstring on each side to close off the hole made by the heating element wires...?

[Ocbench]

It could be. I only had a limited amount of sealstring left, but i thought it was enough to cover the unit. But it´s still a pain that the heating element failed, and I had to take my old NF7-S into use.. But that´s what happens...

[JCviggen]

I think if the heating element fails just contact support and they will probably send you a new one for free :)

[Ocbench]

Yeah I just might do that.. Unless I can fix the element my self. But might just get one from the dealer..

[TheDude]

I'm with JC on this one, I have never used my heater either and have no problems with condensation. I think it's due mostly to my environment, but I can't see it causing the kind of problem you had. My Mach1 was one of those fairly early ones that shipped with both the pad and the heater and I chose to use the pad. I'm sure they will take care of you about the heater. Sorry to hear that you lost your board. :(

[Ocbench]

Thx for the condolences:-) I might just be unlucky.. But it really was soaked in condensation water. Throughout the socket and the backside of oard. Even the Cpu itself had a bunch of drops of water on the backside. Couldn´t I just replace it with some sealstring and neopren? It seems a lot easier than the element. It worked fine back in the day with a 226w pelt..

[TheDude]

Well, that's how I run mine...thick neo pad on backside of cpu with a good seal string application on the frontside. As long as it is sealed airtight you cannot have any condensation....but one tiny place where air can get thru blows the whole deal.;)

[Ocbench]

Alrighty, thx Dude... I have a bunch of Neo lying around somewhere, I might just take it into use. It seems a hell of lot more reliant to use neo than the element. But it won´t do no harme, to get my element replaced anyhow.

[TheDude]

I would still apply the black plastic "cup" that the heater was inside of with sealstring around the edges, just fill the inside with neo. It's not how much string you use, more like how well you apply it that counts. ;)

[Holst]

The cup on my mach1 wont fit in my case (LianLI) so I have just stuck some neoprene to the back of the board with seal string.

As the other guys are saying id ditch the heating element and go with some neoprene as with the mach1 units.

I think the reason they have swiched to the heating element is because the mach1 plastic peice is too big to fit in a lian li case, but the neoprene is a much better solution IMO

Maybee you can mod the replacement heater into a pillow heater for an elderly relatives pillow :P

[Popcicle]

Make sure you use the closed-cell type neoprene.

Cut up a mouse pad.... it's closed cell.

If you can't blow air thru it then then you got the

right stuff.

[Stang_Man]

i've had condensation form all over the place and the board still worked afterwards.

try drying it all out with a nice hair dryer, and if it still don't work then.. :(

[charlie]

unless the water gets underneath a row of capacitors shorting them to each other with the board power turned on ...then they're DONE! I lost a P4C800-e this way, be careful with water-proofing!

C

[TheDude]

Yeah...if the cup won't fit, just use the closed neo as they say. You could cut out the mobo tray so that it fits, but with the stock mounting hardware I wouldn't bother to cut it. My Bowman modified Mach1 requires that I cut the tray because of the custom mounting hardware. It has the benefit of allowing easy access to the four posts from the backside of the board. I do this on all of my rigs that use the four posts mounting system.