I blew my motherboard - Asus Z77 Sabertooth

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Atrocitus

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Mar 31, 2013
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I just recently built a brand new rig and due to an incredibly stupid mistake managed to blow the motherboard.

When I first built it I was careful enough to plug my cooler into the 3 pin 'asst fan' socket on the mobo. Of course doing this caused an error message to pop up when it posted. However this error message annoyed me and I decided to stick the 3 pin connector of my cooler into the 4 pin 'cpu fan' socket. Needless to say when I powered the system on I heard a loud bang accompanied by a flash and a horrible burning smell.

Worth noting is that the mobo was still powered on until I killed the power. Main question is, is there any way of being able to fix this? I will be doing some testing after work and it would be great if you guys could suggest a couple of things to try? Otherwise it sounds like I'll be buying a new mobo.

Cheers!
 
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smorizio

smorizio

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Jan 22, 2010
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Bang and flash sounds like a cap in the power supply blew up. If not in the power supply see if one of the caps on the mb is damaged. I would contact asus for a rma replacement. In real life you can use three pin fans on four pin headers. The forth pin is used for pulse with modulation fans signal.
The three other pins are still wired the same as three pin fans. The only way to blow it up is if you plugged the floppy power cable into a fan header.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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However this error message annoyed me and I decided to stick the 3 pin connector of my cooler into the 4 pin 'cpu fan' socket. Needless to say when I powered the system on I heard a loud bang accompanied by a flash and a horrible burning smell.

Head, meet desk.

You let the magic smoke out of one or more components. Fix = replacing something.
 
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Atrocitus

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Mar 31, 2013
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It definitely was not the power supply as I saw the flash come out of the bottom of the motherboard. Are repairs of this nature generally pricy? If so is it worth a repair or should I just replace the board all together and be done with it?
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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You were correct to plug the 3 pin cpu cooler fan header into the 4 pin motherboard cpu fan header.
I think your error message before had nothing to do with your problem.
I would contact asus for a rma. Hope that nothing bad happened to the cpu.
Was your psu a quality brand? If not, all bets are off.
 
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Atrocitus

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Mar 31, 2013
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My PSU is a Corsair AX860, pretty decent I think. As to you saying I was correct, could I have possibly stuck the connector on the wrong 3 pins?

Also the cooler is a kraken x60 water cooler, but i wouldn't have thought that was an issue.

Edit: I did not have to force the connector on. It slotted on quite nicely.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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Your psu is a good one, no problems there.
Fans will only go on one way without forcing.
A 3 pin fan header will run at full speed when connected to a 4 pin pwm cpu header.

Read the motherboard manual and the cooler manual to see exactly where things are.
I think it unlikely you plugged the fan into something strange and dangerous.
 
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galleon

galleon

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Jul 23, 2013
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Ya I had a similar problem just today. I bought a Z77 to replace a faulty board, together with an Antech Liquid cooler with a 3pin connector. Note that the liquid cooler has two fans plugged into it, which in turn is plugged into the CPU Fan 4 pin connector. So I booted it up, and it gave a CPU fan error but CPU fan is turning. So I shut it off and move the plug over 1 pin (newbie here). Turn it on, SMOKE! Issuing out from behind the MB. Now the CPU fan port is totally dead, so I plugged the fan into the OPTIONAL CASE FAN and everything works fine. Easily controlled by the software provided by Antech since the cooler is also plugged into a USB port.

Wow, I thought my boss was gonna kill me for a bit there. Can someone tell me if I did something stupid or if its a faulty motherboard? Thanks
 
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