Insulating Washers?

[HaX]

Do you guys ever use the Insulating Washers on your motherboard?

 

[revenant]

I do.. have you seen all the metal flakes that come off when screwing the mobo anchor screws down? it's pretty substancial sometimes.. I use the washers, don't torque the screws too much, and blow the mobo off after seating them all down. you can get away with doing none of those and be fine most of the time, but I like to play it safe there.. if you don't use the washers for sure blow the board off well after install.

 

[Dan_D]

I do.. have you seen all the metal flakes that come off when screwing the mobo anchor screws down? it's pretty substancial sometimes.. I use the washers, don't torque the screws too much, and blow the mobo off after seating them all down. you can get away with doing none of those and be fine most of the time, but I like to play it safe there.. if you don't use the washers for sure blow the board off well after install.

I've built hundreds of machines and I've never seen what you are speaking of. In any case, I use them if I have them available, but mainly because I've seen some boards have grounding issues in some cases, and those washers fixed the problem in those rare cases I've encountered. Those cases were all 7 years ago or more, and I've yet to encounter this problem with modern motherboards, but as I said before, I'm old school so I use them if I have them available to me.

 

[Deleted member 133315]

I have, I think he means the threads start to get worn and they can end up shaving off the spiral threads and end up with tiny pieces of metal/threads that have either come away from the actual screw or come off from the top of the screw hole.

I have seen it many times but not on the motherboard screws, its the pci slot screws that tend to do it that I have seen. I think its more likely if you tend to unscrew and screw the same screw in a lot and also if you dont get the screw in straight, if its slightly tilted then its more likely to wreck the threads of the screw and when taking the screw out the pieces of thread come loose, I also have built hundreds of boards, but I havent seen it alot on newly built boards, just ones that seem to be taken apart and put together lots of times.

About the washers, if you got them use them.

 

[FallenMystic]

Both used them and not; one of the saving graces of these is that they work good to test out instability issues, (read grounding.) I recently built a 680i based system for a friend; after putting the board in the case fired it up... fans spun up and died.

Couldn't figure this out, took the board out of the case and set it on an anti-static bag, hooked up power/vid etc...(essentials) and it fired up... weird...

Long story, (about 4 hrs of troubleshooting,) and after that I found that one of the screw holes had some bad solders... the line ran down and intersected one of the other solder points on the back. The insulated washer helped me find this, (put it on the back between the standoff and the board, and it worked.

Moral of the story, use em if you've got em; and keep around spares for that just in case factor.

 

[kirbyrj]

I'd use them if I had them, but I don't have them and often cases don't come with them, so I don't use them.