Motherboard burnt

[Mhtml]

As some of you already know my mobo blew up a while ago. Now at first I thought it was only 1 spot and I didn't really investigate it until now, rather just removed my hard drive and thought nothing of it.

However now, I've taken a better look and I pulled my ram out to check it in my mother's computer which happends to support PC2700. So I pulled my mum's ram out and put mine in... Nothing!!

So I whent back to my mobo and looked at the dimms, it's melted a little on both dimm 1 and dimm 2 and black at the botton ends (corresponding with black along the bottom right of my ram which I missed) so that's 2 sticks of 256mb ram in the trash.

My agp port doesn't seem to be to be damaged, so my radeon 7000 (don't laugh at my poor old graphics card!) is alright I think.

I'm worried about my cpu though. My mum's mobo isn't socket A so I can't test it but it's a little black around the top middle of it, and a little white.. I didn't use thermal paste, just the wax that is on the retail hsf and that was orange so it's not thermal paste I think.. But this is on the outside so it's probably alright on the inside right?

I've noidea what caused this though, it's almost like everything simultaneously overheated!

Anyone had this problem before?

[liorean]

Hmm, a power surge may do that before the fuses start to blow, when lightning hits or when you get the power back from a power outage. When my modem burn, pretty much the entire thing seemed to be affected.

[Celtboy]

Socket A, eh? Look around on the motherboard at the capacitors (round things).... Socket A mobos for whatever reason, have a greater tendency to have decaying capacitors. Look to see if you can find leaking...brown stuff coming out of them.


Anyway, the round spot in the middle of the cpu is pretty good indicator that the core is shot....sorry. (test it, of course, but don't expect life). It's possible you've got capacitor gunk on it....but I wouldn't get my hopes up.


power surges suck. I'd also check out the powersupply. By "check out" I mean "place in the trash." It's possible that it's ok, but when power does something like that, you can almost guarantee it screwed up the PS.

[oracleguy]

If there was a big enough overload to cause that much damage to the ram, the cpu is most likely lost as well.

You have some kind of power surge due to lightning?

[Ultragames]

When you look inside your power supply, DONT TOUCH ANYTHIGN IN THERE. if ya had a lightning strike, there may be enough enough power sitting idle in the power supply to kill you.

[Mhtml]

Yeah I mentioned the capacitors didn't I? Maybe not :P but they were the first things I noticed. I check my mobo roughly every month, mainly to clean off any dust that gets in there but I also look at the capacitors to see it they're bulging or leaking.

Where I live we get massive lightning storms, I've lost 4 modems to lightning. We get at least 1 surge per year which is really big, like once lightning shot right out of the phoneline which I had unplugged and sitting underneath my external modem so it didn't fall behind the computer desk it whent right past my head! Was totally incredible.. I was frozen to my chair thinking about what had happend..

We have surge protectors and stuff but if you get lightning within 100M the power surge through the lines is incredible, they even heat right up to glowing!

Usually I just unplug all the phone lines in the house and put rubber caps in the plugs so that electricity doesn't shoot out of them which can happen I've seen it ;)..

But seeing as the surge arrest things worked I think I am thinking I didn't unplug the phone lines... I think I did the thing I usually do, took the line out of the modem and stuck it under it to prevent the modem blowing and then the power must have come through and seeing as my modem sits on top of a nice metal computer case I think that's where my mobo got that exrta juice from.

I usually go to sleep when we get a storm because I can't do much else except for homework ;) ...

I tested my cpu in my friend's computer and it's totally dead. Good thing I wasn't using my computer I think...

[oracleguy]

Quite lucky you weren't using your computer, I can only imagine what would have happened.

[Mhtml]

My PSU is alright it seems although some of the plugs are melted I got a multimeter out and tested it and seemed alright, granted I'm not going to use it again I'll chuck it but still..

Not sure about my optical drives though, I'll test then in a few minutes. But my hard drive works fine, I'm actually using it in this computer I'm working on.. I had to backup and format it but it works none the less :)..

[Celtboy]

ergg....time to move....sheesh.

[Mhtml]

lol yeah. I live in the country at the moment, obviously there is more tendancy for ground strikes compared to cities where the chance is a only a small fraction.

I'm hoping to move into the city next year as I will begin university next year. At least then I can get broadband :D ... I'll have to get a new computer before then I guess.