Hi,

I have had a bit of an issue with my motherboard Hope someone can shed some light on the matter!

The last 8 months I had run through 5 motherboards the last of which has resulted in it going up in flames last night.

I have had 1 DOA, 1 BIOS failure 1 ?unknown cause. My latest was a i7 gigabyte ex58-ud3r with an i7 920 D0 o/c'd to 3.1ghz (water cooled cpu and gpu all temps <45C) which was perfectly stable and lasted for a month before packing up as I shut the computer down over lunch 2 days ago, tried to restart it an hour later and all it would do was power up for 1 second then shutdown and continue doing so until I pulled the mains. This has been sent off as RMA.

In the mean time I have been using my old GA-EP45-DS4 (with a dual core 1.6ghz )plus the same PSU (Corasir modular 850w) and GPU (ATI 4870 1024mb) with stock cooling and water cooled gpu (all temps <35C) for a few days as a replacement, all was well until the esata cable connected to my WD 1tb passport drive fell out of the external esata module connected to the mobo. I reconnected it, then went to chek the drive, lifted it up when the computer lost power, restarted itself then heard two popping sounds, and then smoke and flames appeared in my tower!! I pulled the mains and extinguished the flames. Upon assessment the esata cable from the module that is plugged into sata 1 block on the mobo had melted leaving residue in the socket. In addition the mobo had melted under the 24 pin power connector and under some chips about 6 inches to the left.

I have used this drive, module setup for about a year without issue until now. This kinda shook me up, especially with 2 young kids in the house and the comp is next to their rooms!!

Would I be right in thinking that the esata module was the cause? It was powered by the PSU from a 4 pin molex as per attached picture. I have also included links to the pics of the board.

Please help!!!!!! I will provide any additional info as required. Sorry for the long winded story

Pics:

img51.imageshack.us/img51/3285/stp83137.jpg

img121.imageshack.us/img121/5849/stp83136.jpg

img705.imageshack.us/img705/5352/stp83135.jpg

img696.imageshack.us/img696/1226/stp83134.jpg


Ben

Watercooling!!! Did all of your faulty PCs have water cooling?

1. Check for a leak.
2. Check for a blockage. If your components are overcooking then not enough heat is being conducted away.

If in doubt, use air cooling - not as fancy but a hell of a lot safer in case something goes wrong.

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