Mobo fried.

[JohnnyR~]

After assembling my new system last night, I go to plug in the power supply to the wall and soon after doing so I notice smoke coming from the bottom of the motherboard (this is before booting only simply connecting the power cord to an outlet).

The component that burned was a small area between two capacitors on the bottom, right under the last PCI slot.

The capacitor was not bent, smashed, or disturbed in anyway during the install. So my question is, was this a board defect that could've happened to anyone during install or was this something that I possibly did to cause it?

 

[SYL\X/3K]

Im thinking mobo defects, id return it A.S.A.P
unless you connected something wrong , i doubt it

 

[eyeCpc]

If you mounted the board wrong where something live was touching ground you could expect some smoke then. Otherwise you may have a bad cap to blame. The other thing to consider is a bad supply with short sending a surge through to the board. The power connections are all one way plugin types to avoid mishaps.

 

[JohnnyR~]

I'm glad the general consensus is a bad mobo. I've been building PC's for the last 7 years and I have had problems before but the recent 4 PC's have been assembled flawlessly.

Here is a pic of the failed capacitor.

My motherboard is a ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Socket AM2

 

[turtile]

It could just be the wall outlet's fault or PSU (sending a surge) or the board could have shorted out due to a defect or an object in the area.

 

[JohnnyR~]

I have a Thermaltake W0106RU 700w PSU.

 

[eyeCpc]

If the supply has a shorted cap it won't matter what make and model. Something happened there to see smoke come up from the board. You will want to have the supply checked out before using it again even as a precaution to prevent damage to any other board.

Without even turning on the power to boot the system the board itself doesn't frie on it's own. When plugging in the ac cord with the power off but breaker on? A bad cap in the supply shorting to ground or simply pushing a surge into the board is far more likely. Have the supply tested and find out.

 

[JohnnyR~]

I was leaning towards a bad PSU myself, but I didn't want to have to consider dealing with a dead mobo and a bad PSU.

How would I go about testing this PSU out before the new RMA'd board arrives?

 

[eyeCpc]

For the supply the best way is to bring it in to a repair since someone with the necessary experience will know how to place a load on it while testing to see it that's your problem. The board itself would only have a very small draw on the supply with the green led that shows if power is available. That's in miliamps only. A place like Compusa or even Circuit City or a pc repair shop would be the place equipped for testing.

You had the breaker switch turned on when plugging the ac cord in strongly pointing at the supply itself sending a surge most likely due to a shorted cap. Even if something on the board was touching ground you still hadn't pressed the power switch to then see a power demand by the board since starting up a system sees the heaviest demand at that time. If you simply reversed the wires from the front panel for power and reset buttons you wouldn't see smoke come up like that. Something saw some heavy current.