Ever seen a motherboard litterally burn out? I just did....

[the_leander]

Bought a dandy little ECS K7SOM motherboard, onboard graphics, sound and lan, came with a cpu on board and was what I was after, a nice cheerfull little board that has a cpu included in the bundle.

Ok you might say that buying such a system was a mistake in itself, and you may be right, but I've got a gaming rig, its big, loud and drinks up more juice then my old C=1940 monitor ever did. What I was after was something phisically small (its a micro-atx board) and quiet. I got this, or so I thought, I put it in the case I bought for it, plugged the atx power connector to the board, power and reset buttons, and led's... so far so good, but being me I thought what the hell and turned it on... just as well really that I did... as soon as the power went on, the fan started up, and the power led lit up, good start... then two or three seconds later a light caught the corner of my eye - one of the solder joints on the board was in flames! Ripping out the mains connector the thing died down... I pulled the board and will be taking it back tomorrow...  

Just a quick question, has anyone else had something this extreeme happen to them when setting up a computer?

[the_leander]

hehe, I'm glad I'm not the only one to have this happen to me :-D

The thing that got to me the most is that between the seconds that it took me to take stock of the situation and me pulling the plug, the fan and led were still spinning and lit up respectively!

And the smell.... kinda reminded me of ozone, or the smell a model train gives off after its been running for a while...

[the_leander]

In relation to K7 motherboards, I have never bought anything outside of ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte brands thus I haven’t seen any scenarios that you have describe.

Well my gaming rig is an ECS K7S5A and quite frankly its a beast, never had a days problem with it and its running with an overclocked cpu in a warm room, being ritually abused by my playing high end games on it via windows 2000pro. I cannot dis the k7s5a because it is a wonderful motherboard, that said, the reason I went for the K7SOM was because it shares many of the componants the K7S5A has (north/southbridge etc)...  the only real differences being the inclusion of the SiS740 embedded graphics chip and lack of sd-ram  slots and an agp connector.

[the_leander]

Its either ECS has dropped the ball in regards to quality assurance OR somebody/something has damaged your K7SOM motherboard during transit to you. There's a greater chance that the value end motherboards may be fitted substandard components.

quite possible and may even be a bit of both (more than likely given the quality of mail "carriers" in this country), it surprises me even now, some 8 hours after the fact, that this board litterally fried...  Another point I'd add is that the board itself (minus the cpu) costs about the same (give or take £5) as a K7S5A does, sadly, I can't find any of them locally and really can't be bothered with some of the online retailers I've dealt with in the past (No matter what I've bought, something has ALWAYS been wrong with what I recieved from the various places I've tried, hence my falling back to local bricks and morter merchants).

IF it’s under warranty one should RMA the board for a replacement.

I bought it at a shop called Maplin Electronics (a major retailer of electronic stuff throughout the uk), they're a big firm and very good with their customers so I don't forsee any trouble with getting a replacement.

What a way to go though hehehe.

[the_leander]

Had a cap blow in a monitor we were burning in once, which in turn set the ceiling on fire.

Ouch! Nasty stuff.

[the_leander]

heh, I was planning on getting this motherboard for a friend of mine. I typically stick with ASUS boards, but they don't make a board quite like this one, and for that price. Anyway, keep us posted on the outcome!

Will do boss :-D

[the_leander]

UPDATE:

I got the replacement home about an hour ago, plugged in all the cables etc and the second unit went up, same place as before. Am now going to take the lot back and get a refund, I'll not be getting another one of these boards again. Its a real shame as I do like ECS, but I wont be buying another one of their all in one boards again.

@ Glaucus

Don't buy this board, I don't know if it was a couple of duds or the psu is incorectly wired, but either way, is it worth going through this to find out for sure?

Ye Gads I'm p***ed off right about now.

[the_leander]

ECS boards are junk.

And as I said to someone else, my prior experience with an ECS board says otherwise. Never had a days problem with my K7S5A ever.

For the price of your headaches, you could pick up a niiiice nForce based AMD board

And end up having to get another graphics card anyway becuase of BeOS's poor support for the nforce boards (some work, some simply don't, no matter what you try doing with them...) thanks but no thanks, I don't have the patience or the time to be farting around with a dozen different models of essentially the same board in the vain hope that one *might* work...

$$$ and want the reliability and stability, go with an Abit or Asus intel boar

Yeah, All I need is about double the cash I have and I'd be able to get one of them...  And then theres the point of well I got this great board, but I can't run BeOS on it, so its junk... my primary concern in getting this board was compatability with BeOS, without that, the board is worse then useless to me.

[the_leander]

2ND UPDATE

Just got back from maplins, they refunded me the money for the ram without problem, but because it was a second return, they had to send the mobo and case to headoffice for testing, once its verified that there is a problem I should get my money back or a refund, if they find that even with the scorched componant it still works ok, then I get it back with little return...

[the_leander]

That is extremly weird... you sure they was not a shortcut somewhere? maybe some metal/screw sticking out from the case? or something psu that is fuc*ed? It is extremly weird that 2 motherboards would do the exact same thing

That had  occured to me, but I went over the case for over an hour and I couldn't see anything physically wrong with it.. It could be an electrical fault but quite frankly I'm stumped on this one. Guess I'll find out when Maplin's head office gets in touch with me...

[the_leander]

I'm glad to hear someone else has had a good experience with a K7S5A - mine's great, although running @ 100MHz at the moment - not sure whether it's the RAM or the (not good) heatsink on the northbridge that's at fault.

move the sd stick to the port closest to the edge of the motherboard, I found it stopped kicking off after that... and it only happens when it played games under windows?!

[the_leander]

What a pain having to wait most places i have taken stuff back to have just given a replacement

I figure they're just covering their own backsides in this, it stops people burning out maybe as much as a dozen boards before giving up... either way so long as I get either my cash back or a system that is actually proven to operate I don't much care either way. That said, if they send me back the board thats burned out for whatever reason I'll be very miffy'ed