Up in smoke.... Thats where my capacitors go....

[pur]

So another motherboard bites the dust....


So I wake up and turn my pc on and I hear a small pop, but since nothing is wrong with the computer (it was still working), I think nothing of it and continue to browse the web for about 10min, then I go and take a shower.

Upon coming back from the shower there is a strong acidic smell in my room. A smell of burnt electronics.
My computer is no longer on playing music like I left it. Its off. I feel terror.

So I unplug everything and pull the board out, removing all parts. I find the following:

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010053.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010056-1.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010057.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010058-1.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010059.jpg

This has happened once before with this board model, although last time it was not near as sever. Guess I'm overclocking too hard as there is no other explanation as to why it keeps happening. It was even the same caps as last time.

Rma time.

[AgentGOD]

Yikes... how much were you pushing it? I have the Deluxe version of the board (P5Q Deluxe), and now I'm a little paranoid. We even have similar specs.

Sucks that it had to die on you :eek:

[MomijiTMO]

Sorry for your loss.

Looks like your mosfets said hell no.

[radaja]

wow.that just sucks.to happen once is bad but twice.what are your voltages?and hows your cooling?
is this kind of thing caused by heat from too much voltages?im kind of scared for my board too.
please let us know all details that you can.again sorry buddy

[MacClipper]

Not the caps, looks more like bigtime mosfet meltdown. Which specific Asus mobo (the one in your sig?) and how much were you pumping into it?

[punx223]

+1 your mesets said no more... i would have to ask.... what were you pushing vcore wise.... either way that is NOT GOOD...

If tahts happened on 2 boards.. check your thermal pads make sure when mounted the mosfets are not pusing through the pad and making contact

[Shadowthor]

+1 for what vcore were you using? PSU?

[paul_]

This is the reason (or one of them) that I take off my MOSFET coolers and re-grease them with Arctic Ceramique or MX-2 before the board goes into use. I am mega paranoid about them going up in smoke :P

[Boogerlad]

That's why I don't like asus. They screwed me over more than 3 times.

[MomijiTMO]

?

Anus may be very anus like but I didn't get total contact on my DFI mobo either. Everyone has this issue.

[Leeghoofd]

Isues maybe due to ya phase change mount ?

[jcniest5]

So another motherboard bites the dust....


So I wake up and turn my pc on and I hear a small pop, but since nothing is wrong with the computer (it was still working), I think nothing of it and continue to browse the web for about 10min, then I go and take a shower.

Upon coming back from the shower there is a strong acidic smell in my room. A smell of burnt electronics.
My computer is no longer on playing music like I left it. Its off. I feel terror.

So I unplug everything and pull the board out, removing all parts. I find the following:

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010053.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010056-1.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010057.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010058-1.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h128/jun_k0/P1010059.jpg

This has happened once before with this board model, although last time it was not near as sever. Guess I'm overclocking too hard as there is no other explanation as to why it keeps happening. It was even the same caps as last time.

Rma time.

Will Asus still honor the board? What if they say it's user's fault (High OCing resulting in too much heat)?

[fatguy1992]

Wow thats amazing :eek:

If you were running your Q6600 @ 4.3GHz (like in your sig) then i'm not really surprised it happened, the P5Q isn't a high end mobo.

[dpokrajac0]

U are really lucky, cus that looks like u had a small fire there.

[fatguy1992]

U are really lucky, cus that looks like u had a small fire there.

Lucky it didn't spread...

[punx223]

actually very small chance of major fire.... ive had this happen when testing motherboards before its actually quite quick, a flash pop flame then just kinda boils the upper layer of the board.... i would say your mosfet when mounting taht cooler may have torn a little or pushed through the pad, and caused it to ground or short....

not ot mention if teh fet cooler was touching a cap, it would have a ground point then it was just a matter of time...

A word of advice.... check clearance on all surrounding products when mounting coolers.... also take teh pad (so not use just ceramique) unless you like replacing boards.... but put ceramique directly on teh fets then place the pad directly on teh cooler the mount it on the fets.... try to mount it while lining the holes up directly is possible... and wiggling you do could cause the thermal pad to tear and give you a future shorting point

[CryptiK]

Wow, that is some serious damage there. I'm also interested to know what vcore, Vtt and vPLL you were running, and what PSU you are using.

[devsk]

I am sorry for your loss but how come you didn't think much of "the pop". Any overclocker knows what that means....:)

[highoctane]

Will Asus still honor the board? What if they say it's user's fault (High OCing resulting in too much heat)?

I doubt it, they'll know something is up with the greased socket.

[Glow9]

smells like an Asus

[punx223]

wow... i didnt know people still greased their sockets.... :shocked: a hair dryer and a lil time might fix taht though

[Jamesrt2004]

lols my board (abit) has poped caps still runs though somehow lols =)

[BababooeyHTJ]

Dude, that is nuts. Judgeing by the pad on the mosfet sink a few of the vrms weren't even making contact with the pad. I'm using the same mosfet sinks on my deluxe and was able to use the stock backplate and screws.

[LOUISSSSS]

hes not going to tell you the voltages until he tries an RMA w/ asus. if he were to post his real results here he would get pwned by asus when they see that he was lying.

[pur]

Well thats a lot of posts.

Yeah I was running 1.5v in the bios, I honestly don't remember the other settings. The board has been running 24/7 for almost a year, only a quick power cycle every few weeks. So the other settings have been long forgotten. The heatsinks on the mofsets never got more then warm when under a load.

As far as posting the "results" they are already on the forum, i believe in my phase thread so :shrug:. All I was doing was using a board feature anyways. As far as greasing the socket, I'll never do that again. It was a mistake this time and there are better ways. Its pretty easy to clean off if you know how as well. I'm not looking to cheat anyone, but I feel I used the board as it was intended.

I had theorized that the cap leaked electrolyte and then it caused a short on the mofsets, resulting in some warm results. Once I took the board off the the tray I noticed that it burned off some of the powder coat on the aluminum. Yikes. It is possible that the mofsets just quit, but they were never more then warm. On the old mobo, the mofsets didnt go, a cap leaked electrolyte, but it was just below the mofsets, so no short that time, but who knows. On the bright side, everything else still works.

No, I'm not sure it will get rma'd again. If it doesn't its no big deal. I will buy another but probably not asus. The rma last time was painful. It took forever, then they sent me the wrong motherboard (an AM2 board), and then when i finally got someone on the phone I was told to take pictures to prove they sent me the wrong one and email them. Only the rep i sent the pictures to got off work, so I had to go through the entire phone tree again, and send the pictures again. After 7 weeks, I got the correct replacement board. Unacceptable.

With all of that, anyone have suggestions for a non-asus board?

Just needs to be DDR2 and have a P45 chipset. Crossfire not needed.
Not interested in i7 at the moment. Performance is plenty high for me at 4.3ghz. A small jump with i7 is not worth the 500-700 it would cost to upgrade.

[radaja]

get the UD3R it does great with quads.

[Retro]

Well thats a lot of posts.

Yeah I was running 1.5v in the bios, I honestly don't remember the other settings. The board has been running 24/7 for almost a year, only a quick power cycle every few weeks. So the other settings have been long forgotten. The heatsinks on the mofsets never got more then warm when under a load.

As far as posting the "results" they are already on the forum, i believe in my phase thread so :shrug:. All I was doing was using a board feature anyways. As far as greasing the socket, I'll never do that again. It was a mistake this time and there are better ways. Its pretty easy to clean off if you know how as well. I'm not looking to cheat anyone, but I feel I used the board as it was intended.

I had theorized that the cap leaked electrolyte and then it caused a short on the mofsets, resulting in some warm results. Once I took the board off the the tray I noticed that it burned off some of the powder coat on the aluminum. Yikes. It is possible that the mofsets just quit, but they were never more then warm. On the old mobo, the mofsets didnt go, a cap leaked electrolyte, but it was just below the mofsets, so no short that time, but who knows. On the bright side, everything else still works.

No, I'm not sure it will get rma'd again. If it doesn't its no big deal. I will buy another but probably not asus. The rma last time was painful. It took forever, then they sent me the wrong motherboard (an AM2 board), and then when i finally got someone on the phone I was told to take pictures to prove they sent me the wrong one and email them. Only the rep i sent the pictures to got off work, so I had to go through the entire phone tree again, and send the pictures again. After 7 weeks, I got the correct replacement board. Unacceptable.

With all of that, anyone have suggestions for a non-asus board?

Just needs to be DDR2 and have a P45 chipset. Crossfire not needed.
Not interested in i7 at the moment. Performance is plenty high for me at 4.3ghz. A small jump with i7 is not worth the 500-700 it would cost to upgrade.
I wondered why bother to rma an Asus P5Q, not worth the trouble, especially with experiences like that!
Since you want a simple but reliable non-Asus P45 board, I was also going to suggest looking at Gigabyte's P45 boards, as radaja has just mentioned. As well as the EP45-UD3R that he suggested, there are the UD3L, UD3P, and the DS4P versions, best to compare prices and availability in your area.

get the UD3R it does great with quads.

[003]

Isues maybe due to ya phase change mount ?

Thats a good point... MOSFETs actually degrade and eventually fail when used in extremely cold temperatures.

Oh BTW, my experience with Asus RMA has been nothing short of fantastic. I got on Advance RMA on my old Rampage Formula, they sent me a new one with 3-day shipping while I still had the dead one and once I got it, I sent back my defective one.

[GAR]

Gigabyte over Asus anyday. No one comes close to Gigabytes quality.

[Cyber-Mav]

Gigabyte over Asus anyday. No one comes close to Gigabytes quality.

agreed, it was shown not too long ago that asus dont use japaneese capacitors, they were found out to be using cheap chineese capacitors that explode.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-gigabyte-motherboard,5348.html

why would anyone buy an asus board after all this information was made public about them a long time ago?

insted of asus trying to disprove that thier boards are cheap they try and sue http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7505&Itemid=1

funny stuff.

[YMAA]

Gigabyte EP45-UD3P all the way.

And that sucks man, I know about ASUS' crappy service. I had to RMA my P5Q-Deluxe a few months ago. The RMA process took a month. I was livid. When I got the notification that the board was on its way back to me, I called them to ask what was wrong with it. The lady I talked to said there'd be an invoice in the box and that'd tell me what was wrong. When I got the board there was no such invoice. I never called back to follow up...if they weren't going to tell me the first time they wouldn't tell me the second time, especially after the board was in my hands again. Their work was done :rolleyes: For all I know, they waved a wooden stick over the board chanting "la la la la" and sent it back to me. The jostling during shipping out there probably did more to fix it than they did.

The whole reason I bought the P5Q-Deluxe this time was because I saw the screenshots of people who had next to zero vDroop with a 65nm quad, which impressed me coming from a G33M-DS2R from Gigabyte which had terrible vDroop (not their fault, the board wasn't designed to OC a Q6700). And I had a great experience with two separate M2N-SLI Deluxe boards - mine was great and a friend's survived two different electrical problems...once from being shorted against the motherboard tray of his case because the idiot didn't use standoffs, and a second time when his house was hit by lightning and he didn't have it on a surge protector. The board lived, he traded it to me, and I sold it to another friend for cheap who's using it now and hasn't had a single BSoD or crash (though he's not an overclocker and that particular board has never been OCed to my knowledge). And because the M2N-SLI Deluxe was so well-built I never had to deal with ASUS' customer service. Recently that opinion has changed.

The next time I buy ASUS you can rest assured there will be a gun to my head.

[pur]

Gigabyte EP45-UD3P ordered.

[punx223]

i have a ep45 ud3p and it is an AWESOME BOARD