Ever burn a motherboard?

The only motherboards that I've lost have been from lightning strikes that took out the internal modem.

I had another system where 1 of the locater pins for the slot 1 heat-sink fell out and shorted across pins inside the PII CPU. The voltage regulator for the CPU got so hot that it moved off the pads on the motherboard.

That said, it is VERY possible for a loose screw to take out a motherboard.

What likely happened is that the screw shorted one of the on-board voltage regulators to the chassis.

On some older (pre Pentium) motherboards the traces were often too close to the mounting screw holes.
This worked okay with plastic stand-offs.
With metal stand-offs, you had to use an insulation washer or you risked shorting out the motherboard.

Chas

I have never had a motherboard blow because of a screw, but I have seen plenty burn.

Some old Compaq boards will cook the processor and melt the ziff socket.

I once saw a chip on a Compaq Proliant board explode, part of the chip jumped about five feet in the air.

I have seen several motherboards that had been
destroyed through being shorted out. In one case it was a screw that lodged between the back of the motherboard and the case causing a major short and blowing a number of components. The board was fixable but was only half the cost to buy a new one (labout very high). I have also seen a case where a fellow moved the board from one case to another and mounted it in the second case without standoffs, the board was just screwed direct to the case. His wife said he heard it blow from two rooms away when he turned it on. When last seen, 2 years after the event, she was still laughing about it. BTW He has not done any home computer repairs since.

I've seen the results of some peoples actions in dropping metal things into the case while things are running. I've seen several M'Board's where the battery needed replacing and instead of doing it with the power off they just attempted to change the battery with the power on and when the dropped the battery it took out different items depending on where it landed mostly however they where power trani's that got damaged.

But I've also seen the results of a lighting strike and more recently where a Power Supply failed in a Server and put mains voltage into the case. I'm still waiting for the Subpoena for that one as it has resulted in Court action which is pending.

Col

Hi,

I have been a freelance computer technician for three years now. Serving about 25 residential clients. But I have never experienced a board on fire because of a screw. It would be possible if the screw is kinda wet. Though we all know that components of a board are active ones. Or if your tech guy's sweat dropped on the board.

My experience with a burned board would be that an incompatible processor and board. That would be a jetway board and a pentium 3. Board's configuration is not correctly set by a friend and when we power up the system. Boom the board is on fire. My friend forgot to set the jumper settings correctly.