Asus Rampage III Formula - Need advice on damage

[ruoy25]

Hello

I did a very shameful mistake yesterday. In my 15 years of applying thermal paste I never damaged anything. But there is always a first time...

To keep this short, I slipped with my screw driver and tore off two very small what appears to be transistors.

Here are the images:

The location is in the upper left corner of the board next to the cpu. My best guess is that they have something to do with the power regulation to the cpu? Just a wild guess.

Luckily I managed to save both of them =

The machine runs and boots fine. I right away reverted my OC to stock speed. I took the risk and used the PC for 7hr streight yesterday (5hr of gaming). I told myself if nothing happens in 48hrs I might be out of the woods. After I was done with gaming I opened up chrome and did a little browsing on the net. That's when the PC crashed with no BSOD. It booted up right away after. Got scared and shut it off right away for the entire night. Still boots fine and runs good as I'm writing this from the PC. I want to keep it off as much as possible though to reduce any risk.


My question to you guys is =

1. Do I run risk of frying everything that's connected to the PC (GPU is the most valuable component)?

2. I have a Solder pen. Can I use it to attempt a repair? I would make a little droplet and use a sowing needle to apply it to the connecting spots and then attach the tiny transistors.

3. Does the orientation matter of the tiny transistors when putting them on?


I'm open for any suggestions to the problem. I live out in the countryside so bringing it to a shop is unlucky.


Cheers

 

[Ralston18]

You will need a motherboard schematic to find out what those two transistor's do (did).

If all seems okay you are probably safe with exception of possible crashes at the wrong time - during an update for example.

Very unlikely that you will be able to restore the transistors. Orientation matters and there does not seem to be much left to connect with.

Even if you can solder and have skills to do so in that "environment" I recommend against even trying. For the most part your system is working and another "slip" may be fully fatal to the motherboard.

Sooner or later you will likely discover some consistent error or lack function that can be related back to the missing transistors. Perhaps some missing temperature measurement. Or perhaps the transistors presence was intended for some specific purpose that was not implemented. Not uncommon to have troubleshooting test points on circuit boards. I.e, to measure current or voltage.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Anything on the board in close proximity, and often even when not, to the CPU, likely has to do with power delivery, PCI architecture or something else directly related to CPU operation. I would be very surprised to discover you do not end up with some kind of major problem and putting them "back" is probably not even possible without high end electronics assembly and repair equipment.

Possibly, but not by the average home user, even if you have had success with soldering caps and such on power boards in the past. This is a whole other ballgame. Traces and components on modern motherboards are extremely delicate and not tolerant of anything that isn't 100% right with very little tolerance for non precision. I agree with Ralson, you will find a problem somewhere at some point. It might even be to the level that it causes damage elsewhere to connected components.

 

[ruoy25]

I thank both of you for the quick reply. I will not do any experiments/repairs on the board then. Like said my biggest worry is that it will damage my GPU. I wont let that even be a option. So I will scrub the dust off of my old Evga X58 board and test that if it still works. Its such a shame because the Asus Rampage Formula III was such a great mobo to me. It held strong for sooo many years. Probably going to end up selling it for parts then. Again appreciate your guys suggestions.