Finally back up and running

arnemetis

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 2, 2004
Messages
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Well about 3 weeks ago my mobo died on me and the rma process took its sweet time, but my troubles weren't over yet. I reconnected everything and must of been messy with the thermal epoxy on the mosfets because I lit my mobo on fire :( (pics here and here). Thankfully it didn't take anything with it, but no rma'ing this one, so off to microcenter for a replacement. All seems well, and my 260s are back up and folding. My ppd is crap right now that only my 8800gs has been running, but soon I'll be back in 18k ppd territory. Sorry for the dip everyone, top 100 here I come!

 
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damn.. thats some crazy shit.. never seen mosfets do that before.. i mean ive seen em catch on fire by being over volted.. but never by putting some heatsinks on them..
 
Holy crapo arnemetis :eek: I ain't never seed mofets do that before either :confused: I honestly hope I never do :) It's good to hear you're back up and DCing :p

Err...., you gots to stop celebrating the 4th of July so early with the fire (pun not intended) works (wait till' the 4th, only kiddin') :rolleyes:

Good luck and here's hopin' no more smokin' mofets, just smokin' into to the top 100 :D
 
i have never seen them on fire. Glad to hear the troubles are over.
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Yeah I'm 99% sure it's because I wasn't careful enough with the arctic silver alumina thermal epoxy, and it got some down on the traces and created some kind of short. It wasn't apparent until I finally got into windows and ran intelburntest, after a few minutes it actually burned! O well, I'll stick to thermal tape for now on.
 
If you had shorted them out, I doubt you would have even gotten as far as Windows. They were probably faulty MOSFETs, so when you placed them under load, they blew. Not too uncommon of a defect. Anyway, it's good that you're back up and running :).
 
The folding gods are pleased with your burnt offering. Your WU will fold swiftly hence forth.
 
The folding gods are pleased with your burnt offering. Your WU will fold swiftly hence forth.

LOL - got a chuckle when I read that Kendrak. While it was still worth an RMA, that could have been maximum carnage there on that MB Arnemetis :eek:
 
Well, rma not so much an option....see they expect you to use the stock cooling, and they would be wondering why the underside of the stock mosfet cooling wasn't toasted. Besides that, I misjudged the amount of epoxy to thermal paste again, and removing the copper heatsinks from the board destroyed most of the pwms. I might take a picture later, but I really can't see any situation where this would get an rma lol.
 
Well, rma not so much an option....see they expect you to use the stock cooling, and they would be wondering why the underside of the stock mosfet cooling wasn't toasted. Besides that, I misjudged the amount of epoxy to thermal paste again, and removing the copper heatsinks from the board destroyed most of the pwms. I might take a picture later, but I really can't see any situation where this would get an rma lol.


go buy a 1 dollar lighter from the store.. and set the lighter about 2 - 3 inches from the heatsink.. the lighter will turn it black.. problem solved.. :p
 
I suppose I just decided that this one wasn't salvageable (since the pwms were destroyed) so I hacked up the stock northbridge/southbridge/mosfet cooler so it would cool just the mosfets (since my mobo is on water), and that one right there kind of ruins it for me. O well my mistake obviously so I'll eat this one, I'm not out to screw over evga and get a free mobo out of the deal.
 
I suppose I just decided that this one wasn't salvageable (since the pwms were destroyed) so I hacked up the stock northbridge/southbridge/mosfet cooler so it would cool just the mosfets (since my mobo is on water), and that one right there kind of ruins it for me. O well my mistake obviously so I'll eat this one, I'm not out to screw over evga and get a free mobo out of the deal.



you know you could try contacting EVGA.. they are actually pretty good about rma'ing boards that have died after having the cooling modified.. i know they allow it with their graphics cards.. since evga supports people overclocking their motherboards.. if you havent contacted them yet.. it might be worth a shot..
 
They say a picture is worth a thousand words...here you can see the extent of the destruction to the pwms after removing the copper heatsinks...

I suppose I could post this on the EVGA forums and see what they say, but my hopes aren't exactly high on this one. Oh and here's the hackjob I did on the stock 790i cooler to get the mosfet cooling off -
 
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