I really screwed up (literally)

[Night Runner]

I believe I have just rendered my new ex58-ud5 board useless. I had my rig up and running, and I realized my fans on my CM Hyper N520 were blowing the opposite way they were supposed to (I installed the unit per pics on box). So I reluctantly took the mobo back out and got the unit flipped around. When I went to screw the cooler back on, I made a bonehead move and forget the backplate. Obviously the washers would not properly secure the cooler so I torqued them some more and ended up stripping the masking off some of the traces on the board. I am a complete dipshit!

I have attached a pic of the damage. Have I just rendered this board a paperweight?

 

[Night Runner]

I reduced the picture to the area where the damage is located. My fear is a short circuit. It is hard to tell (even with a magnifying glass) if the traces touch at the bend at the bottom of the hole.

Advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Twoboxer]

Even without a short circuit, you could have signal transfer to adjacent traces.

There really is no advice to be given. You can try it, you can scrape it, you can toss it. Got a 3-sided coin?

 

[Night Runner]

What damage do I risk to my other components if I try powering it up?

 

[Twoboxer]

Unknown. If I could have told you there was little or no risk, I would have. Also dunno if you have just scraping, or also crushing the multilayer board.

I have no idea. Perhaps Gigabyte knows.

 

[jsc]

Should be minimal. However, here's what you can do:
Remove everything except the PSU , CPU & HSF, case power switch, and the case speaker.

Try to boot. If you are lucky, you will hear a series of long beeps - indicates missing memory. The motherboard CPU power regulator should protect the CPU. And, if you have a good PSU, the short circuit protection built into the PSU should protect the PSU if the motherboard is damaged.

If you get the long beeps, add the RAM. Boot. The beep pattern should change to one long and two or three short beeps.

Install the video card and any needed power cables and plug in the monitor. If the video card is good, the system should successfully POST (one short beep, usually) and you will see the boot screen and messages.

Note - you do not need drives or a keyboard to successfully POST (generally a single short beep).

If you successfully POST, start plugging in the rest of the components, one at a time.

Or you can assume the motherboard is bad and replace it.

You need to decide if the risk to the other components is worth the possibility of discovering that the motherboard still works. But testing the components in stages minimizes the risk.

 

[outlw6669]

^ +1

If, after testing as detailed above, everything seems to be working I would probably try to seal the traces with something like a few coats of clear enamel nail polish.
That should hopefully give you a layer of defence against corrosion and shorting.

 

[kikireeki]

The pic you posted is too bright and it shows two possible short-circuit areas but it might be the picture exposure!
anyway First of all make sure to clean up the area to remove any possible metal bits
and I think it is going to work and you will be surprised how tough these boards are!

 

[kikireeki]

[strike]ok looks I was too late glad to know that it worked![/strike]

 

[outlw6669]

On a second look at your photo it looks like two of the traces may be shorting (a little hard to tell with that foto).

It would probably be a good idea to completely clean the affected area with nail polish remover or 90%+ isopropyl alcohol.
If there are two traces shorting, very carefully use a pick or something similar to clean the material from between the two traces.

If one of the traces ends up being broken (either through the initial damage or by opening a short) not all is lost!
You can repair it using a conductive pen or an automotive rear window defroster repair kit.
You will need to carefully mask off a single trace and 'paint' a new trace over top the damaged one.
After the new trace has dried, make sure to seal it so it is not scratched off.

Best luck getting it to work!

 

[Onus]

By pick, he didn't mean a garden pick, and that was a very good idea.

(the garden pick is for if it is broken, and nothing you do can fix it)

 

[bilbat]

Run over to Radio Shack, and pick up a set of these:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062756
Use the angled pointed one to (very carefully) scrape a line between each affected trace, then use the 'wire brush' thingie (burnisher) to dislodge any loose bits; blow it off well, clean it with the iso alcohol previously mentioned (you can get the 90% stuff at Walgreens - not many places carry it that strong, and you can get nail polish there on the same trip - try to get the nylon based 'nail-strengthening' kind), let it dry, paint on the nail-polish, avoiding the hole, let it dry - and you're (safely) back in business!

 

[Night Runner]

Thanks for the advice fellas! Prior to coming on here, I had already cleaned the area with alcohol (albeit 70%).

I went ahead and put everything back together piece by piece. I am currently installing Windows on the machine. I will run some tests when I get up and running and make sure the memory reads okay since it appears that is where those traces are headed.

How crucial is it that I apply the nail polish to protect the traces?

 

[bilbat]

Not really vital, but I'd do it anyways. (But then, I'm pretty obsessive...) I'm pretty sure the 'pseudo-varnish' coatings on boards are mainly because the substrate materials (depending, mostly, upon their relative expense) tend to be somewhat hygroscopic - i.e., they tend to absorb water (off-state environmental humidity), which is capable (but unlikely to) change their dielectric (insulating) properties; the main problem, though, is 'soggy' bords lose dimensional stability - I've actually seen boards in water-treatment facilities (and I have no idea of how old they were, or what environmental disasters they were exposed to for how long) that had become 'spongy' enough to shed traces like snake skin - not real good for function! Now, unless you live in, say, Louisiana, and leave your machine off most of the time, I'd guess it's damned unlikely anything close to this would ever be a real-world problem - you pays your money, and you takes your chances... I just recommended it as: it's easy; it's cheap; it'll only take a minute; and, if I were servicing a client's machine, I'd do it 'just on general principles', so that, later on, no one would say "WITH didn't you do that?!?"

 

[Night Runner]

So far I have passed two passes in Memtest86+ 2.11 and about an hour of Prime95.

Things look encouraging so far. If everything checks out okay for now, is this something I will have to worry about in the future?

 

[bilbat]

Nah -you'll be fine... From the picture, I can pretty much assure you that those are all signal traces - not current carriers: they're fine (I mean, as in really narrow), and, if you notice, they 'meander' (they sort of 'squiggle around') - the 'meander' is a trick used on high-speed signal traces to attempt to assure that signals having to travel somewhat different distances all arrive at the same place at the same time (we're talking picoseconds here - 10 to the −12th seconds!); if you take a close look, you'll find a lot of those 'meanders' near your memory sockets - they're used to accomodate for the difference in spacing of the DIMMs...

 

[Night Runner]

Everything seems to be running okay. Thanks for your time.