- Jul 13, 2018
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Hi guys,
So I've been having some serious issues. I recently bought a fairly new system.
- Intel i5 8600k
- MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon
- G.Skill Trident-Z 16 GB: 2 x 8 GB - 3000 MHz - CL16 - 1.35 V
- PALIT JetStream Geforce GTX 1060 6GB
Then I kept on using my 3 year old OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w as my PSU.
This system was completely fine (no OC's or anything like that) for about half a year, but summer hit and I wanted to swap out my Antec Formula 6 (used in a pinch) with some great Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut instead for the hot summer months, as well as cleaning out the dust filters. So after cleaning I removed my CPU cooler (a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 LED Turbo), carefully took out the CPU, cleaned it with cleaning alcohol as well as the cooler. Put it back together, double-checked cabling, proper mount, the usual. Pressed the power button and BOOM! a crackling electrical flash went through the PSU followed by some smoke and the breaker went out as well...
Definitely not a good sign so I completely turned off the system, inspected the PSU by taking it apart seeing that the NY278P (IC501) switching regulator had a big hole burnt into it. Then I went and inspected the rest of my system.
At first I couldn't see any physical damage on any of the other components. But then I completely took off the CPU cooler, trying to figure out what went wrong and then I discovered something: https://ibb.co/gn8be8
So, the Coolermaster cooler uses aluminium blocks that have little pads so they can't connect to the area around the mounting holes, but somewhere while taking or putting the cooler back one of the pads moved and as can be seen in the picture it scratched the area around the hole exposing a copper wire creating the short.
So not knowing exactly the kind of damage this short did, except killing my (when doing some research pretty crappy) PSU, I got myself a brand new PSU (Corsair RM650x) to test my system...
By this stage I took the entire system apart, and made a small test area on a clean and stong table with some cardboard to start testing (lowest number of connected devices). Conclusion: The motherboard was completely dead, generating some heat only on the part where the audio-chip was located.
Then I got myself a new board, the ASUS Prime Z370-A and started the process again. But this time I connected a few of my harddrives, one of them apparently had a critically faulty controller chip after the last short that immediately made the system shut down, took out the controller chip from the drive and saw this: https://ibb.co/g46CK8.
Having a bad stroke of luck this 'little' short killed part of my brand new motherboard, for one the ambient LED's stopped working, so just to be sure I quickly RMA'd the board, had a replacement in 3 days and finally started to test...
So, what happend? The DRAM LED would start blinking four times (I tested all slots, with one and two sticks, always the same thing), put in a speaker which didn't give me any beeps. Then I just took them out and the speaker immediately started beeping as would be expected with a full DRAM LED glowing. Also, when starting the system it took a few seconds for the RGB LED's on the RAM to start working.
So I'm thinking my RAM is probably faulty at this point, but could this also be the case for my CPU and GPU after that first or second short?
So I've been having some serious issues. I recently bought a fairly new system.
- Intel i5 8600k
- MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon
- G.Skill Trident-Z 16 GB: 2 x 8 GB - 3000 MHz - CL16 - 1.35 V
- PALIT JetStream Geforce GTX 1060 6GB
Then I kept on using my 3 year old OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w as my PSU.
This system was completely fine (no OC's or anything like that) for about half a year, but summer hit and I wanted to swap out my Antec Formula 6 (used in a pinch) with some great Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut instead for the hot summer months, as well as cleaning out the dust filters. So after cleaning I removed my CPU cooler (a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 LED Turbo), carefully took out the CPU, cleaned it with cleaning alcohol as well as the cooler. Put it back together, double-checked cabling, proper mount, the usual. Pressed the power button and BOOM! a crackling electrical flash went through the PSU followed by some smoke and the breaker went out as well...
Definitely not a good sign so I completely turned off the system, inspected the PSU by taking it apart seeing that the NY278P (IC501) switching regulator had a big hole burnt into it. Then I went and inspected the rest of my system.
At first I couldn't see any physical damage on any of the other components. But then I completely took off the CPU cooler, trying to figure out what went wrong and then I discovered something: https://ibb.co/gn8be8
So, the Coolermaster cooler uses aluminium blocks that have little pads so they can't connect to the area around the mounting holes, but somewhere while taking or putting the cooler back one of the pads moved and as can be seen in the picture it scratched the area around the hole exposing a copper wire creating the short.
So not knowing exactly the kind of damage this short did, except killing my (when doing some research pretty crappy) PSU, I got myself a brand new PSU (Corsair RM650x) to test my system...
By this stage I took the entire system apart, and made a small test area on a clean and stong table with some cardboard to start testing (lowest number of connected devices). Conclusion: The motherboard was completely dead, generating some heat only on the part where the audio-chip was located.
Then I got myself a new board, the ASUS Prime Z370-A and started the process again. But this time I connected a few of my harddrives, one of them apparently had a critically faulty controller chip after the last short that immediately made the system shut down, took out the controller chip from the drive and saw this: https://ibb.co/g46CK8.
Having a bad stroke of luck this 'little' short killed part of my brand new motherboard, for one the ambient LED's stopped working, so just to be sure I quickly RMA'd the board, had a replacement in 3 days and finally started to test...
So, what happend? The DRAM LED would start blinking four times (I tested all slots, with one and two sticks, always the same thing), put in a speaker which didn't give me any beeps. Then I just took them out and the speaker immediately started beeping as would be expected with a full DRAM LED glowing. Also, when starting the system it took a few seconds for the RGB LED's on the RAM to start working.
So I'm thinking my RAM is probably faulty at this point, but could this also be the case for my CPU and GPU after that first or second short?
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