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Friend of mine runs my rigs for me at his apartment. "Utils Included"


He woke up to a apartment that stunk like burnt PCB.

This is what one of my 890FXA-GD70 motherboards looked like this morning....


https://i.imgur.com/avksE.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/k7Sb6.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/27JVX.jpg


Crazyness.... All the GPU's seem fine PSU seems fine... have yet to test the ram and CPU.... Glad I have a spare while this one get's RMA'd ...

Pop goes the capacitor!

I am glad all the GPU's are fine and I have a spare board :) Just getting it swapped out right now..

the hell is on the cover of that book?

Protip:  Resize your photos to fit a webpage better.

And dang, I haven't ever seen a motherboard melt THAT badly.

wow

Wow! Lucky nothing worse happened!

Sorry. I was just trying to get the pictures uploaded for MSI RMA Dept :)


It's not sitting on a book, It's a pack of cigarettes with a retarted 3/4 pack warning on it....

What SgtSpike said! Lucky that your GPU's made it!

Yikes,  now that is a burn.  This should be the ad for not leaving your mobos running on the box they came with or any other flammable material.

:) I'm glad... crazy hole in the damn thing...

Thanks god you are still here to post your story. :) How many cards and what model was on this rig?

Please resize your images with an attribute width. http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Img

Or just quote this post for some code to replace the first post.

Thanks ^ Done..


here is an update... MSI Customer service has got right back to me. There upgrading this board to a 990FXA-GD80 motherboard and sending me a prepaid shipping label to send my "defective" board back :)

I have had problems with EVERY single MSI board I have in my farm.  Out of 43 rigs, 11 are MSI. The rest are what many people call "crap".  ECS and Biostar.  2 are ASRock that I've had some small problems with. Not one problem with any ECS or Biostar.  No need to jumper presence pins or do other crap to have the board run 4 gpus.  MSI boards on the other hand... to me... "crap". 

That's pretty hilarious actually...  I've only had one MSI board, and it's treated me fine thus far running 24/7 for more than a year now.

I had a Foxconn board once.  Once.

I've also dealt with a few Biostar and ECS boards.  Don't remember any of them dying on me.

I've had pretty good luck with Gigabyte boards.  The only time I had one die on me was when I put max voltage through the northbridge and ran it that way for 3-4 months.  I usually look for Gigabyte boards when I'm on the lookout for a new one, but they don't always have all the features I need.

Weird.  My rigs have been the other way around.  Almost all of them are ASRock boards (36 of them).  Some of the early ASRock boards have been rock solid, but the recent ones have been junk.  Board after board with PCI-e slots that don't work (right out of the box).  Some periodically reset BIOS settings for no reason (even though the panel button wasn't touched) and they hang if the power fluctuates (brown-out).  However, I started my mining farm with 5 MSI boards that have all been completely flawless.  No issues whatsoever (except that they only had 3 PCI-e slots).

Yikes. Impressive.

:pow:

I'd say electrolyte leaked out of one of those caps and shorted some power traces coming off that thar 8-pin molex.

"Military class" lol.

See what happens when you try to switch to LTC.

Military class My ass MSI

Actually the 8pin is fine everything is fine.. but the board.... Glad I had a spare....

Those caps are tantalum, so they don't use a liquid electrolyte. Apparently the usual failure mode of tantalum caps involves them turning into a dead short and exploding violently as a hundred amps or so of current surges through them.

Lucky it went out o its own I am guessing and did not spread. It's an eye opener. Could happen in your sleep & spread, that's where you will have problems.

KABOOM!

I'm now slightly worried where my miners are right now (surrounded by cardboard and alcohol)

 :-\

Maybe keep them out of the "LCBO" storage are :)

Oooh, a Canadian joke ;)

Can we have a pic of the box of cigarettes ?

https://i.imgur.com/zKXbi.jpg

Care for a smoke?

Asrock burns too - burned at power on:
http://ipicture.ru/uploads/20121105/bxEUOW16.jpg
http://ipicture.ru/uploads/20121105/5l0i6q5q.jpg
http://ipicture.ru/uploads/20121105/a3SEO438.jpg

This particular motherboard is known for VRMs going kaboom, but not this.

Is MSI going to replace it?  Just curious because I have a MSI board too.

How old were those mobos?

It looks like the fire started from the mosfet and spread to surrounding area, the mosfet probably overheated after it lost contact with the thermal pad under the heatsink. A rather common problem on this particular model, especially when the motherboard starts bending due to sheer weight of aftermarket cooler.

Um, no.  Those are not tantalum.  Try again.  I don't see a single Tantalum cap on that board, anywhere.

You're right that they are not aluminum electrolytic and they don't use liquid electrolyte, but what they are is Aluminum Organic Polymer.
Here's a datasheet to one such example: http://nichicon-us.com/english/products/pdfs/e-lf.pdf (http://nichicon-us.com/english/products/pdfs/e-lf.pdf)

The parts on that board appear to be 270uF 16V Parts, like this one: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Nichicon/PLF1C271MDO1/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtm5nWh%2fhvnH8k9pXxgWw2s4L2G99qszmw%3d (http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Nichicon/PLF1C271MDO1/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtm5nWh%2fhvnH8k9pXxgWw2s4L2G99qszmw%3d)

Enigma

Ah, familiar packs, you must live in Canada :)

They had me a 990FXA-GD80 within 2 days of this happening.





I started getting in to mining some time after August 2011... Sooooo that old!


:)

LOL Yeah.... Do you have a reservation near you to buy cheapo smokes?

Yo ! :)

Nice to see MSI taking care of you like that.

I busted a brain cell trying to decide which mobo to go for. The gd 80 is a sweeet board. :D

I am trying to get them to upgrade 2 more boards for me..........

Lol I love free upgrade programs.

wow just saw the pictures, I'm gonna put a fire extinguisher next to my desktop...

wonder whether they will do a recall... :D

Good to know.  I had problems with two of those boards and eventually had them upgrade me to the 990fxa as well.  They weren't that quick shipping but I'm sure you had your word with them after almost causing a fire.   That probably opted for a shipping upgrade i imagine ;)
I also had to pay the difference in price for the upgrade.  A little disappointing, but again my problem was not as "traumatic" as yours haha.

I am located about a 3 hour drive from there service center.. They overnight shipped me my boards...


Just waiting on there okay to send back a couple more boards for upgrade I hope...

Nice.  I am about 10 hours away.  I wish I would have gotten overnight shipping and free upgrade but they took care of me none the less. (after two bad 890fxa's)

There going to upgrade some more for me and do a cross shipment.... even agreed to replace working 890FXA-GD70's :D

I guess it all depends on who you deal with..

My first mobo upgrade, before the Gigabyte 990x, was an MSI 970-g46. It turned out to be very unstable and when I tried to rma it, before returning it to the store, the dude wanted to downgrade me to the 870 chipset. lol

Holy shit, how did that happen? Did you overload the board with multiple high end GPUs? You need one of those ribbon extenders with the power molex man. That'll offload current draw directly through the PSU instead of through the motherboard.

so 3 single GPU cards is too much?


It's a bad design........  don't put 6 PCI-E lanes on a motherboard if It can only handle 2 cards.....

Will they RMA it.. That is the question..

i found Vivien to be the only helpful person.  The techs were ok, just low on patience.  Hard to understand too

Had an explosion of Cap once on a ECS board.
For fire security reasons i have a Fire knock out Device installed over my rigs. The rigs are placed flat on the basement floor and have open cases. These devices are some sort of automatic fire extinguishers. They detonate in contact with flames and spread out water based fire extinguishing fluid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EEB2uE7fu8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-jfLHeJjjc&feature=related

Two sizes available; i am unsind the large one with handle. Sleeping much better since...

Btw - i am also running the MSI boards. Two HD7970 and two HD5970 each (6 GPUs per Rig); PSU is Lepa 1600W G1600-MA.

read the thread. They already did.....

They have RMA'd this will be the 4th RMA with them in the past few months....


Each time they used Purolator Next day service for me..... Always had the boards returned rather quickly....


They might have matched my shipping though, first few boards I sent them were all CANPAR next day service....

I love my 890. It ran from may '11 to feb '11 with 4 unlocked 6950's. dropped in a 5th in feb (tried to do 6 but it just wouldn't cooperate with me :() and it's been steady ever since. I do recommend re-seating the heatspreader on the vrms and taking the silly blue msi thing off of it though.

And yes, keeping your rig which produces incredible heat and consumes massive amounts of electricity 24/7 away from flammables should be a no-brainer.

That just sucks but you are very lucky it didn't ruin anything else. I'm not sure what looks worse, the board or the girl's mouth on the pack of DK's. I was actually considering buying that motherboard but went with another military rated board instead. I better check to see if it has the same kind of caps and sell it soon if it does. I have seen many capacitors go and their failures range from slow hissing sound to violent popping (with a familiar burning smell). None in my experience however have set fire to a board like that. 

I think it has something to do with the 4+1 Power design vs the 8+2 on newer boards.



They know something is wrong with these boards... I believe that's why they're upgrading them without question..