[SOLVED] Advice: Stabbed MOBO with screwdriver by accident :/

[CameronI94]

I was removing a GPU and due to its size, I couldn't hit the PCI lock. I applied pressure with a screwdriver to try and unlock it and that's when it slipped and hit the board, I couldn't get a pic due to where the scratch is but now a silver piece of the MOBO has been exposed... Any advice on if this could be fatal? It's a pretty small mark, considering I can't really get a good pic of it, my main worry is everyone talks about copper exposure on MOBOs and this one is silver. It's an x570 Gigabyte pro board if that helps. Thank you in advance

 

[Grobe]

It's not possible to throw out some fancy accurate statements regarding the damage risk at this point.

That's because if damage is applied, it may not be what you see:

• You should be able to see if you've cut a pcb trace clean off.
• You only see the uppermost layer of pcb traces. Modern PCB boards usually have multiple stacked layers of traces within the PCB card, and you may have damaged some of those as well that you won't see.
• Mechanical shock affecting nearby components, i.e. shaking loose thermal paste if there is cooler ribs fastened only by plastic clips.

 

[CameronI94]

It's not possible to throw out some fancy accurate statements regarding the damage risk at this point.

That's because if damage is applied, it may not be what you see:

• You should be able to see if you've cut a pcb trace clean off.
• You only see the uppermost layer of pcb traces. Modern PCB boards usually have multiple stacked layers of traces within the PCB card, and you may have damaged some of those as well that you won't see.
• Mechanical shock affecting nearby components, i.e. shaking loose thermal paste if there is cooler ribs fastened only by plastic clips.

Ah, that's fair.

I didn't see any traces cut off but I can try and check again today.
Its an aftermarket cooler so hopefully it should be good.

So in this situation is there anything I can do to see if there is any significant damage or do I just have to leave it and accept whatever happens?

Thank you again.

 

[Grobe]

No - you really cannot know for sure unless you actually test it.

The problem is - if there is a shortcut, it may potentially cause harm to other compnents as well (CPU, GPU, chipset, etc).

 

[SlugBugBuddy]

Same thing just happened to me, a microscopic diode was demolished just under the PCI lock for the GPU, haven't been able to test it until my new case gets here.

But the only thing that's certain right now is that I wont be getting any sleep tonight...

 

[Plicker19]

It happens. I scraped a MOBO with a flat screwdriver ans i had metal exposed. it worked fine after that.