P8P67 Pro caught fire

Update:

For those wondering about the revision it was indeed a new B3.

My friend took the 48hr old motherboard back to Microcenter and they gave him a full refund on the motherboard and exchanged his CPU. Memory tested okay. BIG props to Microcenter for allowing him to return it, sucks that he's still out a computer because they're so hard to find.

BIG props to Asus for stepping up in this thread as well as sending me a PM! I still have full confidence in Asus products and this level of customer service speaks volumes.

OC_Seer, can ya hook a brother up with a place to purchase a new motherboard? ;)
 
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.
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I had the exact same thing happen to me. A client of mine had an old PC and it wouldn't turn on, so I swapped the PSU.... BAM... fire on one of the mosfets.

It was pretty awesome when I got to tell him that his PC caught on fire.

Still makes for an awesome tech story.
 
To provide a little counter-perspective, I have had nothing but good boards from ASUS. I am running a P8P67 Pro (B3 rev) right now and my only issue with it was it needed to adjust the memory voltage/clock speed before it would boot. (Old RAM that wants to run at 1.9v)

Gonna keep an eye on this thread, I don't like the idea of my motherboard catching fire.
 
CyCo_SoMaTiC and Vogon, Can you reply here or PM me with the details of which motherboard you had that had burning damage? thanks
 
SB is having some problems. First the P67 Chipset with the sata for the HDD,and there are shortage of board's, and now boards are catching on fire, and i have noticed i anit trying to be the bad guy here, but all i keep seeing come up is ASUS ASUS ASUS, thats all i keep hearing about, is asus P8P67 motherboard line problems since the B3 came out, and now the board are catching on fire. i am scared someone is going to go to leave for work or be sleeping and there house is going to catch on fire.

It just makes me wonder if something more is not going on with the problem, and someone is trying to cover something up. 3 boards catch on fire. what are the chances of 3 boards catching on fire from 3 different people?
 
Gulkor said:
SB is having some problems. First the P67 Chipset with the sata for the HDD,and there are shortage of board's, and now boards are catching on fire, and i have noticed i anit trying to be the bad guy here, but all i keep seeing come up is ASUS ASUS ASUS, thats all i keep hearing about, is asus P8P67 motherboard line problems since the B3 came out, and now the board are catching on fire. i am scared someone is going to go to leave for work or be sleeping and there house is going to catch on fire.

It just makes me wonder if something more is not going on with the problem, and someone is trying to cover something up. 3 boards catch on fire. what are the chances of 3 boards catching on fire from 3 different people?
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It could be some manufacturing defect that happens to some boards....you can't really be sure looking from the outside. Seems as if this happens when first installing / powering up the board. Mine has been on constantly (24/7) since I got my B3 revision and it is rock solid.

If you separate out the intel chipset replacement issue , this in really the only unique ASUS board issue, besides your standard array of questions regarding bios/EFI issues and oc-ing settings on a new chipset.
 
Gulkor said:
SB is having some problems. First the P67 Chipset with the sata for the HDD,and there are shortage of board's, and now boards are catching on fire, and i have noticed i anit trying to be the bad guy here, but all i keep seeing come up is ASUS ASUS ASUS, thats all i keep hearing about, is asus P8P67 motherboard line problems since the B3 came out, and now the board are catching on fire. i am scared someone is going to go to leave for work or be sleeping and there house is going to catch on fire.

It just makes me wonder if something more is not going on with the problem, and someone is trying to cover something up. 3 boards catch on fire. what are the chances of 3 boards catching on fire from 3 different people?
Click to expand...

Yeah- I have a PRO as well and it's the first motherboard I've been sorry I purchased- nothing but BIOS issues from the moment I got it- doesn't work with two of three drives I put in it, several memory brands before it would boot, multiple reboots whenever you turn it on, randomly not posting, losing boot drive designation, bluetooth won't connect to anything etc. My netbook was fine, but this motherboard thing makes me hesitant to buy anything else from them. I guess I'm stuck with the thing but I'll never buy another board from ASUS.
 
wow, looks like it must have touched a standoff when he tried to boot it or something.
 
ZCP M3 said:
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?
Click to expand...

Sounds like a design flaw in the graphite tipped rods.
 
Any chance that the pressing of the memOK button physically shorted out solder pads on the underside of the board to the case or some other wire running underneath the board? I find it strange that the fire started with the pressing of the button.
 
Wow scary. My friend actually had a motherboard explode on him, like, literally, explode. Guess these things can happen lol. I guess it's better that it happens when it's a user initiated action, then randomly when you're not home. :eek:
 
There is a lot of power flowing in a modern PC motherboard and the low voltages make it much harder to build effective fault protection (that is the margin between operating current and short circuit current is likely relatively small). Sometimes a fault directs that power somewhere it shouldn't go and the result is a fairly serious burnup.

remember http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y39D4529FM4

Now that is an old video, AMD and their motherboard partners have since added protection against heatsink removal (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAqlA9EJ4ME&feature=related ) but it shows how much damage can be done by the power levels seen on modern motherboards (and remember modern overclocker motherboards have power circuits designed to be capable of delivering FAR more than the processors nominal power requirements). While CPUs have thermal sensors driving protection circuits these days it's pretty hard to put thermal detectors everywhere the power could possiblly end up.

This is why you should never build a case out of something that can't stand a flame.
 
reminds me of my great PSU fire of 2007, new PSU powered on, flamed up killed everything including the case which it melted part of the plastic top cover because the metal got to hot
 
Fascinating thread. Thankfully I haven't had issues with my asus board. I have a SB build based on a 2500k and an ASUS P8H67-m Evo (B3).

plugwash said:
This is why you should never build a case out of something that can't stand a flame.
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So does that pretty much mean that one should buy only solid metal cases, or at least mostly metal? What about something like Antec's P183? The side panels are actually plastic.

Also, this is off-topic, but to the OP, I hope your buddy got a better video card since then heh. Seems like a waste to put that HD5450 in there because it's pretty much equivalent in performance to the HD3000 integrated GPU, other than supporting directx11 over intel's 10.1. Might as well go with a H67 or Z68 board and just use the iGPU...
 
Well, the same thing happened to my P8P67 pro this weekend. I was swapping out memory and when I rebooted, I saw flames inside the case. Shut it down and removed motherboard and had the same short/charring in the same place as the OP. I suspect either I didn't seat the memory firmly enough and it created more heat/current, or my side panel was not closing easily, so maybe put pressure on back plate behind motherboard causing it to be close enough to arc between the two contacts. Real shame and now I'm afraid that it might happen again since I built this myself.

Link to pic.

http://s1129.photobucket.com/albums/m514/Foozle999/Computer/
 
Foozle said:
Well, the same thing happened to my P8P67 pro this weekend. I was swapping out memory and when I rebooted, I saw flames inside the case. Shut it down and removed motherboard and had the same short/charring in the same place as the OP. I suspect either I didn't seat the memory firmly enough and it created more heat/current, or my side panel was not closing easily, so maybe put pressure on back plate behind motherboard causing it to be close enough to arc between the two contacts. Real shame and now I'm afraid that it might happen again since I built this myself.

Link to pic.

http://s1129.photobucket.com/albums/m514/Foozle999/Computer/
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Did you pull out the mobo, when you swapped the ram ? I usually remove the mobo & place it on a solid foam with cardboard support, then change the ram. Well I did it that way & found out my ram was nfg so I rma'ed it & put the replacement ram in while the mobo was on the tray stand-offs & broke my mobo. Mine didn't go up in flames but it did stop working properly, maybe I didn't give it enough time to flame on before I replaced it. :D
 
Dantrax said:
Did you pull out the mobo, when you swapped the ram ? I usually remove the mobo & place it on a solid foam with cardboard support, then change the ram. Well I did it that way & found out my ram was nfg so I rma'ed it & put the replacement ram in while the mobo was on the tray stand-offs & broke my mobo. Mine didn't go up in flames but it did stop working properly, maybe I didn't give it enough time to flame on before I replaced it. :D
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I didn't pull out the motherboard before swapping the RAM. Seems like that would be a lot of effort, so hope that is not necessary. I will, however, install the RAM before I install the motherboard when I get the replacement, since it will be out of the case anyhow. Yeah, I wish I had left the case open before I rebooted - I might have caught it in time to save it.
 
Hi new here :)

I too have an ASUS p8p67 pro which caught fire. Let me explain what happened, and bare in mind I have bought a new one which works perfectly in my rig.

The motherboard never reached the BIOS it would get to a screen asking me to hit F1 to enter setup, which I did, then I received a garbled screen and would have to reset as it wouldn't respond. After trying a number of things, including the mem OK button, battery, and CMOS jumper, I suddenly smelt and saw smoke and immediately switched it off. Having removed the MB I saw that the PCB was damaged and would have to be replaced.

I contacted ASUS 2 months ago when this happened, having seen this post I was optimistic and expected them to swiftly issue an RMA. But here I am having waited up to 2 weeks for each reply and finally being told that it "In my opinion, it seems welded manually", I am left with a £150 piece of rubbish. I was shocked by ASUS's lack of concern for one of their components not working and then catching fire.

What can I do?
 
xpiy said:
Hi new here :)

I too have an ASUS p8p67 pro which caught fire. Let me explain what happened, and bare in mind I have bought a new one which works perfectly in my rig.

The motherboard never reached the BIOS it would get to a screen asking me to hit F1 to enter setup, which I did, then I received a garbled screen and would have to reset as it wouldn't respond. After trying a number of things, including the mem OK button, battery, and CMOS jumper, I suddenly smelt and saw smoke and immediately switched it off. Having removed the MB I saw that the PCB was damaged and would have to be replaced.

I contacted ASUS 2 months ago when this happened, having seen this post I was optimistic and expected them to swiftly issue an RMA. But here I am having waited up to 2 weeks for each reply and finally being told that it "In my opinion, it seems welded manually", I am left with a £150 piece of rubbish. I was shocked by ASUS's lack of concern for one of their components not working and then catching fire.

What can I do?
Click to expand...

Not much. Do not buy Asus next time. I am done with their crappy products.
 
Gulkor said:
SB is having some problems. First the P67 Chipset with the sata for the HDD,and there are shortage of board's, and now boards are catching on fire, and i have noticed i anit trying to be the bad guy here, but all i keep seeing come up is ASUS ASUS ASUS, thats all i keep hearing about, is asus P8P67 motherboard line problems since the B3 came out, and now the board are catching on fire. i am scared someone is going to go to leave for work or be sleeping and there house is going to catch on fire.

It just makes me wonder if something more is not going on with the problem, and someone is trying to cover something up. 3 boards catch on fire. what are the chances of 3 boards catching on fire from 3 different people?
Click to expand...

To be fair, Asus probably sells as many boards as everyone else combined. So it's probably more accurate to say that if there is a problem, it'll show up in Asus board, just because there are so many more of them.

I don't own an Asus 1155 board, but I do own the Intel DP67BG (some say it's made by Foxconn, others say Asus -- I don't think Intel or Asus will ever tell) and a H67 Biostar. If one of them caught fire, it would be very, very rare. Just because there aren't a lot of them in circulation doesn't mean they're immune, just that the problem is pretty rare. There could be many explanations, and I don't see this as a wide spread problem. In the one example of the memOK! button, maybe just the button was bad, or pressing it flexed the mobo in such a way that it shorted something.

It's worth a thought.
 
Happened to my friend when he had a thumbscrew wedged between the case and motherboard.
 
Is there anything I can do with the board though? Would anyone pay anything for a faulty MB on eBay?
 
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ASUS has now begun placing foam insulator pads on the back of the motherboards near the RAM slot area. My buddy had a P8P67 that failed (no fire) and his Rev 3.0 RMA came back with one attached. Looked at a brand new Rev 3.1 board at Microcenter this weekend and it was without it. Guess its luck of the draw?
 
This just happened to me, area behind ram caught fire.

Vendor wouldn't cover it under warranty, which is understandable, so it's ASUS RMA time.
 
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I wonder if the PCB board flex is breaking the traces somewhere, or Asus has a QC problem.
 
QC, how many other manufactures have you heard of having this issue? And Asus rma is dreadful.
 
I stopped using asus years ago when I had an rma to do and waited on hold for an hour to talk to someone only to be told I they would call me back with the rma number, which never happened. Asked about this at an Intel conference one time and Asus rep acted stupid. No response, no care I'll take my business elsewhere.

Turned all my business to MSI and could not be happier, if you call MSI you will get a response and they honor there warranties. Plus they have a decent reseller website which shows they care about the channel.
 
woodscomp said:
I stopped using asus years ago when I had an rma to do and waited on hold for an hour to talk to someone only to be told I they would call me back with the rma number, which never happened. Asked about this at an Intel conference one time and Asus rep acted stupid. No response, no care I'll take my business elsewhere.

Turned all my business to MSI and could not be happier, if you call MSI you will get a response and they honor there warranties. Plus they have a decent reseller website which shows they care about the channel.
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So far RMA seems to be going smoothly. It took less than 3 minutes to get hold of a rep. I've sent photos of the damage to the rep, so I hope to hear back from them soon.

Although, it's kind of disappointing as I'll have to eat some shipping fees and I'm stuck with only a laptop for the near future.
 
I also got that thick neoprene pad stuck onto back of mobo across all top RAM socket pins
My original B2 Deluxe didnt have it
My original B3 Deluxe replace didnt have it
After my VGA went out (red LED) my RMA Deluxe did have it.
And it says right on it
"WARNING: Do not remove short cicuit protective pad to avaoid damage to the motherboard due to the unusually designed chassis"

So it would be logical they fear some cases CPU window, or sheet metal is too close to the soldered pinouts and is arcing - which is backed up by the pics here. There are .250 high brass standoffs and there are .312 high standoffs. Some standoff areas are sunken in and some are bulged upwards.

Another prob I can see is the RAM slots have locks only on upper side, so its impossible to loosen/lift both sides before removing - you have to angle them out, which can be very dangerous with modern trickle voltage PSU that keep a charge to the caps.

I remember on a Giga P45, I was in a panic about something not working and shut off PC and lifted the RAM at a 45 degree angle and got a giant blue spark from the RAM edge pads to the socket. I coulnt believe it!

Based on what I have seen here, I would now never try to remove RAM in a SB mobo without turning PSU rocker to O and pushing in "ON" button till lights go out.

asw - what is the HS you are using currently?
 
cisco guy said:
I also got that thick neoprene pad stuck onto back of mobo across all top RAM socket pins
My original B2 Deluxe didnt have it
My original B3 Deluxe replace didnt have it
After my VGA went out (red LED) my RMA Deluxe did have it.
And it says right on it
"WARNING: Do not remove short cicuit protective pad to avaoid damage to the motherboard due to the unusually designed chassis"

So it would be logical they fear some cases CPU window, or sheet metal is too close to the soldered pinouts and is arcing - which is backed up by the pics here. There are .250 high brass standoffs and there are .312 high standoffs. Some standoff areas are sunken in and some are bulged upwards.

Another prob I can see is the RAM slots have locks only on upper side, so its impossible to loosen/lift both sides before removing - you have to angle them out, which can be very dangerous with modern trickle voltage PSU that keep a charge to the caps.

I remember on a Giga P45, I was in a panic about something not working and shut off PC and lifted the RAM at a 45 degree angle and got a giant blue spark from the RAM edge pads to the socket. I coulnt believe it!

Based on what I have seen here, I would now never try to remove RAM in a SB mobo without turning PSU rocker to O and pushing in "ON" button till lights go out.

asw - what is the HS you are using currently?
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I have a hyper 212 heatsink. I was running it out of a corsair 600t case so the setup should be fairly common.

After reading this thread a bit more carefully, I might decide to not send in the board. It seems like xpiy had a helluva time with his RMA process. I think I will cut my losses and get a gigabyte board or something - put the 20 dollars it would cost me to ship the Asus mobo to the rma center towards it. I want to avoid a situation where I ship the mobo out, get ignored for 8 weeks, then end up buying another motherboard anyways. Plus, not sure I'd be comfortable running a mobo that spontaneously bursts into flames in a rig that will be on for extended periods of time.

Chalk it up to experience, I guess. I had good experience with ASUS products in the past, hope this one is an anomaly.
 
If you are still here -
When you take apart your system could you look on backside of mobo where the 4 bare metal HS backplate arms stick out (where the hold down studs go) and see if there are any circuitry solder blobs directly under the arms - even tiny ones.

Dunno, noticing these hyper 212+ keep coming up in problem mobo. You didnt peel off insulating tape?
 
Ive got a Hyper 212+, and have had zero problems with both original b2, and replacement b3..

I doubt its the cooler, more likely the case clearance behind the mobo.

The arms on the 212+ have no solder blobs behind the retention pads where the bolt though goes.

also, the entire underside of the back brace (including the bolt thorugh retention pads)is coated with a fairly thick insulation layer..

The back brace does actually float above the back of the mobo, so if your CPU cut out isn't big enough, it may cause some problems if you dont have enough clearance in your case, but its insulated, so its never touching the actual board.
 
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Just took a quick look, there doesn't seem to be any circuitry solder directly under the backplate feet.

Insulation is still there. Followed installation manual provided in the Coolermaster box.

I'm still kind of curious as to why the motherboard caught on fire. I don't think I noticed any arcing with the chassis when it happened to me (had both side panels off), the 600t's cut out for the cpu backplate is large enough that it would have to arc a long long way.
 
i have a 650T, my cutout is nice and big as well.

Gotta love Corsair cases...
 
Ultimately I do not believe this should be blamed on the "case". I do not have one of the said Asus boards so I might just be talking out my ass however I have never in all the systems I have built seen a board that makes contact with any of the back plane of the case. That's what standoffs are for. Board manufactures know there has to be clearance around each standoff hole and they also know that no bare part of the board should make contact with the case. Once many years ago Soyo came out with a very popular AMD board that I made several systems with. They had some shoddy QC issues with the standoff holes, where they were not completely isolated and I lost a couple of boards from that.

And yes as cisco guy pointed out whenever you are messing with components on a live system it is best to disconnect all power from the board. I usually disconnect the main power plug from the motherboard as well to discharge any leftover electricity.

Idk I still think I would send that board into Asus you could easily send via USPS Priority in a free box wrapped in bubble wrap for about $10. Then if you get a replacement 6-8 weeks down the road ebay it for whatever you can get.
 
I live in Canada, so the estimated shipping rates seem to be around the 15 dollar mark.

There's no guarantee that I will get a new board as the rep and rma email said any physical damage will void the warranty. So if they wanted to, they could deny the warranty and I wouldn't have much recourse.

The used computer parts market in Canada is pretty small, so reselling is a hassle. Assuming I do get the board, I think at best I would salvage 60-80 bucks (after shipping costs) from reselling the board. I don't think it's really worth it since I could make that by invigilating one exam at my university.
 
yes that is very scary stuff there are nice sys to have that mobo to burn up .
 
i remember reading this back around march, i figured this problem would be fixed, but i guess i was wrong.

I am staying away from Asus for SB, i dont wanna come home and find my house burned down to the ground. so looks like Msi, or Asrock will be my choice's

Or i will just get a Amd Socket am3+ system.

but there is no way in hell i will use a asus motherboard after reading all this.
 
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