PC diagnosis

spoonbadger

Got a nice machine today, stacker, lots of delicious hard drives. Dual-cpu asus mother board with an 8/24 power pin config.

Now, as soon as i went to turn it on, i got a faint burning smell followed by the machine conking out after ~3 seconds. All fans/lights spun/lit up for the 3 seconds it was on. Whole machine was rather dusty, so i thought, "must be dust in the PSU". Hoovered out the PSU somewhat, tried again and only got ~1 second on this time before it conked out (although it fans/lights did show activity for that second). Looked at the motherboard and saw that the 8 pin connector and lead were charred on the top 4 pins, probably happened when i first turned it on, was probably the cause of the smell and death.

Now, i have a motherboard with a slightly charred 8pin connector and a PSU with a charred 8 pin connector. Questions:

What do you think caused it? And...
What do you think could be ****ed? Motherboard doesn't show any other signs of death other than the connector being somewhat blackened on 4 of the pins. PSU i'm assuming is for the bin.

Big Lar

Loose connection ?

spoonbadger

Very possible, it got a lot of transport today. Hmmmm.

Solitaire

What mobo, what CPU(s?) and most importantly: what PSU?

And charring is double-plus ungood anywhere. On the EPS connector, its most likely fatal :eek: Sounds like a fatal fault with either the PSU or (more likely) CPU and/or its voltage regulators and MOSFETs caused the entire CPU 12V power rail to suicide taking everything along the way with it.

Even if the PSU was good before it might not be any more - I'd test it on some cheap old Pentium 4 that's fit for the bin if its too old to RMA. Again, if there's a warranty on the other parts, use it. Just don't say anything about the vacuuming part - its rare but possible for a conventional vacuum to cause a fatal ESD if it gets too close

spoonbadger

Jeesssus, now that dont sound so good >.<

The PSU was a 1KW turbo-cool SR, by "PC Power and Cooling inc.", the mobo is a dual opteron Asus L1n64-sli. Understandably, the more of this i can save the better. Its all pretty good gear, and the case is somewhat tailored to fit this motherboard

I could try the PSU in another motherboard alright, am i right in saying that a 24-pin connector can be used in a 20-pin mobo with the 2 extra pins hanging over the edge? thanks btw

spoonbadger

Ok, just tried it in a p4 board. P4 board is a 20/4 pin power setup, so i used the same 24pin connector from the PSU and a different 4 pin connector on the PSU and it worked fine. This at least means that the PSU is not 100% fubar. Next, how do i safely test a motherboard to see if it's borked without causing further damage?

Solitaire

That's a lot trickier Besides, the TurboCool is still alive which suggests this was all down to a catastrophic CPU voltage regulator failure. Which means the mobo and CPU are most likely dead

Normally I'd say if possible you could try the CPU in a cheapo motherboard of the same socket to see if it survived the blowout (which is unlikely but the mobo could have absorbed most of it). Unfortunately seeing as we're talking Socket 1207 here you'd have more chance of making a successful moon landing before tomorrow morning

spoonbadger

Solitaire wrote: »

That's a lot trickier Besides, the TurboCool is still alive which suggests this was all down to a catastrophic CPU voltage regulator failure. Which means the mobo and CPU are most likely dead

Normally I'd say if possible you could try the CPU in a cheapo motherboard of the same socket to see if it survived the blowout (which is unlikely but the mobo could have absorbed most of it). Unfortunately seeing as we're talking Socket 1207 here you'd have more chance of making a successful moon landing before tomorrow morning

Aye, i took everything out of the motherboard except the CPUs and the 24pin connector, just to make sure there wasn't something silly like a fan short or something like that. Turned it on and i found out exactly where the problem was. "Smoke signals" if you will >.>

Seems there was a failure in one of the transistors nearish one of the CPUs, was quite noticeably damaged. Motherboard around that chip was browned and when removing the mobo i noticed the metallic paint was actually flaking off. So yeah. Deffo ****ed :pac:

Aye, i'd say at least one of those procs is fried. And like you say, finding something that takes those is nigh-on impossible >.< At least the PSU seems to be ok, and i guess this is an excuse to go new motherboard shopping

Thanks for the help btw

Solitaire

Pain in the tits when an expensive boutique board spontaneously combusts after EoL because there's feck-all chance of replacing it and you can't just go and blow €40-50 on a cheapo one for testing. Having a F1207 die on you is like a Skulltrail catching fire

I know its been around for a few years, but still... either that board has had a very rough life or Asus is being Asus again :rolleyes: MOSFETs are not meant to cook off like that! :eek::(:mad: That's the electrolytic capacitors' job :pac:

spoonbadger

Aye, the guy i got it off mentioned that it may have been left running 24/7 under some stairs for quite an extended period of time. Judging by the amount of dust in it, i dont doubt it >.> looks like it was just an unfortunate case of overheating.

Eh, i got the machine free and i still have a nice case, 9 HDDs and a 1kw PSU as well as some sundry parts i can sell off on ebay to raise some cash. I cant exactly complain :pac: