Smoking Motherboard

[ghostrange]

I recently purchased a small sound card for my computer. It arrived today and I put it in the PCI slot normally, when I powered my computer back on I was barraged by smoke. I assumed my 650w PSU had overloaded and was dead, but after further inspection my motherboard has a black crisp spot on the button near the 20 pin connector only on the border of the mobo.

I hooked up an old 250w PSU to the mobo and the cpu to run some tests, unfortunately it does not have any sata connectors so I was unable to test any boots, but what I did get was the screen telling me I have no available HDD's.

If anyone can shine some light on this, please help.

 

[hikaricloud]

The fact you got a screen at all is nothing short of incredible...

When you say "shine some light" on the situation, do you mean as to what might have caused this? It's a bit difficult to say without more info, but right away I would assume something insane happened to your PSU and fried it. Gonna need more testing of the mobo to make sure it wasn't fried as well, but most of the time it wouldn't initialize if it was burned up like that, so that's a good sign.

What are you running in this machine? And what brand was the PSU? Since you'll need to replace it we can advise a decent one for you to buy.

 

[ghostrange]

Ok, there is a burnt mark along the border because my standoff screw had come loose and the motherboard was touching the case as I booted up. Now my question is it safe to continue using this motherboard because everything is functioning correctly...so far.

 

[hikaricloud]

It'll probably give out eventually, kinda hard to say. I wouldn't count on it lasting a whole long time, but you may have gotten lucky.

 

[ghostrange]

One more question, would you say this is a fire hazard in any way?

I'm using the computer right now and I don't see or smell any smoke

 

[lacerz]

Smoking has been proven to cause cancer, so I'd advise your motherboard to stop.

 

[ghostrange]

Second hand smoke is harmful, I'll be sure to tell him to stop.

 

[Peter.Cort]

I wouldn't say it's a fire hazard, but when electronics get fried (even if they still work afterwards) they're on their last legs, and if something happens to the mobo you risk taking out your cpu, ram and any PCI/PCI-e cards you have in there, so I'd be safe and get a new PSU and Mobo. Cheaper than investing in a whole new system in a month.

 

[Dingadilly]

Once its been involved in a fire, personally I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw it, Replace asap, I'd also want to know what happened in the first place. ie what caused the smoke, to the point that I'd know what went went wrong and therefore what was affected and what might not have been.


Ding

 

[ghostrange]

Well I was putting in a new soundcard and everything looked alright, started her up and I was barraged in smoke. After inspection I noticed I was missing my standoff screw on one side..I thought back to a previous time where I had removed my mobo and figured I had forgot about it and went on with my business. So in short my motherboard touched the case on startup.