ASM 1480 chip popped (twice) what's wrong?

[Johnzxr]

Hi,

I built a new PC using an Asus z97 / 1150 board. I powered it with just the CPU present and fans and LEDs came on, everything seemed ok , then I shut it down. Then I plugged in the RAM, HDDs and GFX cards, connected USB2/3 headers (no devices connected) and powered it up again. This time there was an instantaneous pop, pretty quiet and a small puff of smoke which came from an ASM 1480 chip near the PCI-E slot.

I figured something was wrong with the motherboard, I have built many PCs before and never had a problem before, not like this anyway. So I RMA'd it and ordered a different one, MSI Z97 - G45.

Fast forward a couple of days, rebuilt, same process as above and exactly the same thing happened. So this is not a faulty motherboard issue, this is something else,but what would cause this?

I put it together very carefully. There are no shorts to the case, the RAM and GFX card came from another machine and were both working fine when I took them out.

I did a bit of research on these ASM 1480 chips, they do some multiplexing in the PCI -E bus from what I can make out, does this point to the graphics card?

Has anyone seen this before or can help at all?


Edit: adding an image, the chip in the centre of the image is the one that popped. Yup ca the the 1 of 1480 has a black mark on it, this is where something within the chip popped.

http://imgur.com/ssphjQI


Thanks

John

 

[Johnzxr]

I have managed to diagnose the problem in a little more detail.

The ASM chips really don't like it when both 6 and 8 pin PCI-E power connectors are connected to the card. With the 6 pin only, nothing blows up but with the 8 pin connected as well, more of the ASM chips have popped. Pretty sure the PCI-E ports on my MB are fried now, after all how many of these chips can you pop and get away with it? But I am reluctant to buy a new board until I know why this is happening in case it happens again.

 

[maximumnoise]

did you find any more info on this? I just had 2 of the same chips on my rampage V extreme do the same thing after 10 months of solid use. About to RMA the board, but don't want the same thing to happen again once it is out of warranty.

 

[graxxmusic]

Hi Folks!

I'm having the same problem right now, and also this never happened to me before. I am trying to figure out what's wrong, does anyone has more info about the problem? Also, does the video card survive this incident? I am afraid to try it on another system because it might blow up the PCIE Multiplexers too... I'm about to mail Gigabyte about this problem.
I am using a Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 5 mobo, with a GTX 1080 Ti.