P8P67 Pro caught fire

Z

ZCP M3

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So my buddy brought his 24hr old Sandy Bridge build into work because he couldn't get any video to display.

Build specs...
P8P67 Pro mobo
2600K cpu
4x4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 ram
Corsair 750TX psu
HD5450 video card


Antec 300 case has no speaker so we couldn't hear any POST error beeps. Swapped his video card around the slots, no dice. Tried my PCI video card, no worky either. Checked his CPU cooler, good retention. Same with the RAM. Reset CMOS, nothing. All power cords are properly seated.

So I decide to push the MemOK! button. RAM light starts blinking, no video, and then about 6 seconds later we smell burnt plastic. Look in the case and the freaking motherboard is on FIRE. :eek: Power everything off, blow out the flames, etc. One of the traces behind the RAM on the edge of the board had burnt through!

Any ideas what could have caused this? Did he hook anything up wrong? Does anyone suspect damage to the CPU or RAM?

All components were bought from Microcenter less than 48hrs ago. Will returns be difficult?
 
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Ouch.....that baby is toast....Were all the stand-offs installed and were they the right ones?

Looks like you had a dead short.....but yeah, I would return all of it, no telling what got damaged besides the board.....I would expect to have to RMA it though..the store likely will not accept a return that looks like that
 
Ill will post pics of it all over the net with Headlines ASUS ALMOST BURNED DOWN MY HOUSE
 
Crosshairs said:
Ouch.....that baby is toast....Were all the stand-offs installed and were they the right ones?

Looks like you had a dead short.....but yeah, I would return all of it, no telling what got damaged besides the board.....I would expect to have to RMA it though..the store likely will not accept a return that looks like that
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All standoffs were installed correctly and the board was anchored down well. I hope they let my friend walk out with a new one. This was his first Microcenter experience and first computer building experience.

We shall see.
 
Join the club dude, lol. Sucks that happened, mine had a mini fire as well a month ago but it was a voltage mosfet under the left blue heatsink. It killed my cpu too so I had to get it replaced, but so far everything is back to normal. I have to still get a b3 board though, I've about had it with mobo swapping for a few years. :eek:
 
Oh man, 2 boards that caught fire in this thread? That is very scary stuff. I just built my system last Thursday and so far it has been great, I truly hope it stays this way.
 
thats nasty....

looks like a pretty wide trace, which makes me think its a ground trace..

probobly one of the mosfets drawing waaayyyy too much current and melting the trace.

Id say the CPU is probobly fine, but memory is more sensitive...
 
Yeah all was well until I pushed the MemOK button.

Would it be safe to take his RAM home and throw it in my 1156 box to see if it is okay?
 
Yay, so now we have high end AMD and Intel boards burning up, plus GTX 590s. Meanwhile PSUs have been blowing up for years.

Now all we need is flaming RAM, HDD, and a case made of thermite... "Dude your PC looks sweet!" "Nah, that's my portable fireworks display. It was real expensive."
 
silent-circuit said:
Yay, so now we have high end AMD and Intel boards burning up, plus GTX 590s. Meanwhile PSUs have been blowing up for years.

Now all we need is flaming RAM, HDD, and a case made of thermite... "Dude your PC looks sweet!" "Nah, that's my portable fireworks display. It was real expensive."
Click to expand...

More like portable nuclear reactors...

@OP:
Sorry that happened. Pretty clear that things were *NOT* ok originally at all. The board was just bad, and pressing the memok button just made whatever flaky part was being flaky, actually break fully and the *magic smoke* came out....
 
ZCP M3 said:
Yeah all was well until I pushed the MemOK button.

Would it be safe to take his RAM home and throw it in my 1156 box to see if it is okay?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't unless you have a death wish for your motherboard as well.

It might be ok, but with the board flaming I would not take the chance.

Get everything including the power supply replaced. It is better to be safe than to replace only one or two parts and then have the whole thing fry again because something else got fried the first time.
 
All I can say is that holy shit! RMA it and fast, and Asus better have a good explanation for this. :eek:


What is up with computer parts and catching fire lately? It seems like every new product is designed to self-detonate after certain time.
 
A good fire always makes for a good story. I once had the video card in my old XPS 700 catch fire. I kept hitting the power button and hearing a "click" but the machine wouldn't power on. After 30 seconds I see smoke pouring out the back.

Luckily Dell was more than happy to send me a newer and faster machine in exchange for the evidence.

Looking at the pictures - it looks like the short happened pretty much in the middle between the standoffs. That would hint at me that it could've been due to some flexing due to reseating the components/RAM since that area was unsupported.

Hopefully ASUS will cover this for the sake of not wanting a lawsuit for flaming motherboards, but I had a friend who did something similar (board was shifted slightly and wound up shorting out, killing half the USB/IO connectors on his mobo back panel) and they said it was user error and wouldn't cover it.
 
It helps if you have a speaker for the error messages/beeps. The Antec case comes with a mini-buzzer but can easily get lost if you don't keep it real good. I made a few for my personal use using the old CD audio cables and some 12v mini-buzzers from Radio Shack.
 
Shoulda let it burn then made Asus replace your whole rig. That is fk'ed up because if you would have been at work, it could burned your house down.
 
Here's a related question -- why don't high end case manufacturers like Lian Li / Corsair / Silverstone put a plastic coating / panel under the board? You'd still get grounding through the standoff holes (like you're supposed to) and it'd make these sorts of shorts much less common. Granted, I'd say 99% of the time it's the motherboard manufacturer's fault, poor quality control leading to component leads / solder joints being considerably longer / larger than they should be, hitting the case under the board with little or no flexing. Doesn't really seem fair to expect the case makers to pick up the slack.
 
Wow...just finished rebuilding my PC with the B3 revision board ASUS sent out.....hoping that I am not going to be in the same boat!
 
I had a customer computer start doing that. At first it wouldn't come on, tested the power supply, it showed good. Tried everything else and machine would not come on. Finally decided to hook up another power supply and HOLY SHIT FIRE! Right on one of the mosfets. Was not cool. Sadly it was out of warranty so dude has to buy another machine.
 
ZCP, I just sent you a PM. I'll go ahead and test a replacement for you. To clarify, we have not had any documented cases of this type of failure whether internally in our labs, or at our headquarters, or by partners or system integrators. With that noted, it is a reality that failures can occur hence our interest in working with you and getting the board back so we can analyze its failure.
 
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SOSTrooper said:
great, i'm about to test out my newly bought p8p67 pro... crossing my fingers.
Click to expand...

While this did happen and is documented, I have to say I'm one of MANY users using this board with no problems at all, so yea, it's bound to happen with any large quantity of technology items produced... Sorry it had to be you, but fortunately no one was hurt, and hopefully the rest of the hardware is fine. I'm glad ASUS has already stepped in to make it right. Very cool :D
 
OC_Seer said:
ZCP, I just sent you a PM. I'll go ahead and test a replacement for you. To clarify, we have not had any documented cases of this type of failure whether internally in our labs, or at our headquarters, or by partners or system integrators. With that noted, it is a reality that failures can occur hence our interest in working with you and getting the board back so we can analyze its failure.
Click to expand...

Now this is Customer service. Big ups to Asus and crew for this!
 
Mine caught fire within 10 minutes of power up. The thing actually still POSTs and tries to boot. The VIA firewire controller chip is MELTED. Timeline so far with ASUS boards.

1/14/2011 Purchased at Fry's.
1/29/2011 Determine board is faulty. (random failures, lock ups and crashes)
<spend 7 weeks trying to get it replaced>
3/21/2011 Finally get replacement from ASUS
3/25/2011 17:30 CST Install board.
3/25/2011 17:40 CST. Board melts
3/27/2011 ordered ASrock Fatal1ty P67 board.

I've built my own machines since the late 1980's. I know what I'm doing. I took the board out of the case, put it on the cardboard box and fired it up again. The VT 6308B Firewire controller chip reached a temp of over 250 degress F and caught fire. No firewire devices were connected at any time. The Firewire front panel header was never connected either.

ASUS wins. This build has been one cursed mother from the word go. I just don't have it in me to walk the gauntlet of ASUS's RMA process again. What an epic beating that was. I am half convinced they make this process ugly and painful on purpose. Cuts way down on the amount of product returned. Just for grins I called on Monday and spent 90 minutes waiting without talking to anyone.
 
...why order an ASRock board if ASUS seems the source of problems? Same brand. Same engineers. Same crap.

Cancel your order if you can. Return it if it's too late to cancel. Buy Gigabyte or something instead.
 
silent-circuit said:
...why order an ASRock board if ASUS seems the source of problems? Same brand. Same engineers. Same crap.

Cancel your order if you can. Return it if it's too late to cancel. Buy Gigabyte or something instead.
Click to expand...

i do believe asrock is their own brand now. rocking a b2 and soon getting back a b3 board for the server. no issues. i'm pleased with the board so far. it runs seti 24/7 12 threads (4 are gpu) no problems
 
silent-circuit said:
...why order an ASRock board if ASUS seems the source of problems? Same brand. Same engineers. Same crap.

Cancel your order if you can. Return it if it's too late to cancel. Buy Gigabyte or something instead.
Click to expand...

Don't let a single bad model of mobo company tarnish your opinion of the company AS A WHOLE. Tsunamis aside, people are still buying Toyotas, and people still buy Firestone tires.

AFAIK there haven't been ANY reports of ASRock boards burning up like this ASUS model.
 
matrix563 said:
i do believe asrock is their own brand now. rocking a b2 and soon getting back a b3 board for the server. no issues. i'm pleased with the board so far. it runs seti 24/7 12 threads (4 are gpu) no problems
Click to expand...


True. While I think there are still some connections between Asus and ASrock, they are still their own companies with different approaches to motherboards.
 
This kinda makes me nervous as I usually leave my computer on for extended periods of time even when I'm not home. I wonder if this could have something to do with the fact that you can't find this board anywhere?
 
CyCo_SoMaTiC said:
I had a customer computer start doing that. At first it wouldn't come on, tested the power supply, it showed good. Tried everything else and machine would not come on. Finally decided to hook up another power supply and HOLY SHIT FIRE! Right on one of the mosfets. Was not cool. Sadly it was out of warranty so dude has to buy another machine.
Click to expand...

Do you know what motherboard that happened on?
 
Vogon said:
Mine caught fire within 10 minutes of power up. The thing actually still POSTs and tries to boot. The VIA firewire controller chip is MELTED. Timeline so far with ASUS boards.

1/14/2011 Purchased at Fry's.
1/29/2011 Determine board is faulty. (random failures, lock ups and crashes)
<spend 7 weeks trying to get it replaced>
3/21/2011 Finally get replacement from ASUS
3/25/2011 17:30 CST Install board.
3/25/2011 17:40 CST. Board melts
3/27/2011 ordered ASrock Fatal1ty P67 board.

I've built my own machines since the late 1980's. I know what I'm doing. I took the board out of the case, put it on the cardboard box and fired it up again. The VT 6308B Firewire controller chip reached a temp of over 250 degress F and caught fire. No firewire devices were connected at any time. The Firewire front panel header was never connected either.

ASUS wins. This build has been one cursed mother from the word go. I just don't have it in me to walk the gauntlet of ASUS's RMA process again. What an epic beating that was. I am half convinced they make this process ugly and painful on purpose. Cuts way down on the amount of product returned. Just for grins I called on Monday and spent 90 minutes waiting without talking to anyone.
Click to expand...

Hi Vogon,

Which ASUS board do you have? If you still have this board and would like to have it RMAd, PM me and I'll help you get it resolved. Also, please provide the make and model of your chassis as well as your PSU.
Thanks.
 
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