Sparks and white smoke oh my!!

J

jAcKeLPDW

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May 3, 2003
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I'm having some serious problems. Last night, my friend's computer just completely went poop on us. It just shut straight off, and then starting to emit a smell. My friend is in college classes during the summer, and so he was talking to me about it over the phone. We thought the smell was coming from the power supply, we went ahead and ordered a new PSU that night, with the agreement that I would come over today just to verify that it was the power supply by testing it with mine(same model we ordered him). I plugged mine in, and immediatly began to smell burning. As I quickly unplugged the PSU I noticed a part of the motherboard was sparking and smoking, and was red hot.

Large picture of his MoBO:

alextroubles1.jpg


Here is the module on the board that was glowing red/yellow, and spitting out sparks+white smoke.

alextroubles2.jpg


So I don't really know what much we can do. Apparently there had been a ton of lightning storms and Alex's dorm had been having power surges all day, going on and off. Unfortunately the ASUS manual only identifies jumpers it seems, and so I can't seem to figure out what the "F4" written above the module has any relation to. The board is a A7N266-VM/AA..if any of you have any ideas be glad to hear them. We are probably going to order a new motherboard tomorrow if we can't find any answers.
 
Is it the jumper or the component next to the jumper that's getting hot? If it's starting to change colors and emit sparks from the heat there's a great chance that the motherboard is a goner.
 
Well, a bad smell is usually a good sign that something very, very bad happened.
 
Seeing as how you said there were lightning storms and power surges all day, it may just be me but im "GUESSING" that it got zapped. invest in a surge protector next time.
 
Just in time for the 4th of July! :p

Yup, sounds like it got jolted. How are the other components (vid card/RAM/etc)?
 
You fail to see the beauty of this.

Invest in a see-through case and enjoy the FREE glowing MB lights that will be the talk of every party.
 
I think it's time to put her to rest. Looks like the mobo got a little to much power to it and it was fried. Tell him to get a surge protector in or it might happen again.
 
i can desolder that piece off my dead a7n if you'd like. You can have both ;D
 
I'd RMA it.
If it's not under warranty, you can try to replace that part that's glowing/smoking. Chances are though there is something else wrong that's causing that part to smoke.
 
yeah, i'd imagine that too, but if you want that piece and if i can unsolder it (i looked on my board, and i don't know if i can unsolder the entire piece...) you can have it :D
 
do not try to repair it. all your likely to do is kill off the rest of his system. try to rma it or buy a new motherboard.
 
It definitely sounds like it's new motherboard time. Like the others suggested - tell him to invest in a decent surge protector on his new system.
 
just remove that part of the motherboard and it should be fine.
 
the solution is volt modding. cut apart the wire going into the psu. solder the wires you find to the ends of the piece. this should fix it. :rolleyes:

sorry, don't do that. new mobo time. or, if you can find a resistor with the same impedance you could solder that. be careful not to melt and traces tho. that'd be bad (worse?)
 
I think thats some sort of a MOSFET or power regulator which means the motherboard is officially dead. You can thank the thunderstorm for that one. Hopefully he's still got a warranty on that board so it can be RMA'd through the manufacturer. I would also check other components too. I had an Abit IT7 blow a MOSFET and kill my 1.6 P4 with it....that incident also had the white sparks and wicked smell.
 
I've seen similar problems in several motherboards, and it's usually the fuse for the front 1394/usb ports. There's a pretty good chance you can let the component finish burning up, and the motherboard will work fine after that (well, everything except the front usb/1394 ports.)
 
The board should still be under warranty with Asus since they have a 3 year warranty. I just RMA'd my old A7V266-e a few months ago and it came out aroudn the same time as that board. RMA the thing unless he needs a computer sooner or just wants a new motherboard. It will probably take at least 2 weeks to get the mobo RMA'd though. And that is if they get right on it once the mobo gets to them. Considering the age of the mobo, I would look into getting a new motherboard myself. Maybe later on RMAing this one to have a spare or build another system around.
 
see if you can find similar looking components on your vidcard and run jumper wires to your motherboard
 
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