[SOLVED] Asus ROG MAXIMUS VIII HERO Z170 Not starting up after usb power failure/short

[puNDuKE]

Hey guys I have a question about something random that happened to me the other morning leaving me pretty stressed out about what to do... more impatient than anything though atm.
So the other morning I plugged my crappy flip phone into my usb jack and the usual 'connect to PC' menu didn't pop up and no folders for it's harddrive displayed for me. I noticed it was charging but that was about it... seconds later after moving the mouse around the whole computer just turned off. I knew something heavy went down at that moment especially after it wouldn't power up anymore. I noticed the power light on the motherboard was flickering but any attempt to turn it back on was unsuccessful. I went and purchased a new 750 w power supply and hooked it all up, I feel stupid now because I reused the power cables for the harddrives and perf. but it is the same wattage but I will definitely fix that and put the ones that came with it back in when I replace the board. I tried turning it on without any of those modular cables plugged into the power supply and just the cpu and motherboard power cables plugged in only and still no dice. Anyway, the light at this time is solid but any attempts to power it back on are in vain. The button on the motherboard will not power it up at all either. I hit the reset cmos button and the red backlighting flashed a couple of times indicating that it did this but still will not turn back on. It is plugged into a surge protector and everything else works on it and nothing seemed to be wrong there so I don't know.

I have a friend coming over to help me put a new board in that I ordered from the same chipset and we are going to put everything into that one assuming the motherboard is bad now. I have read other stories of rechargable devices frying the motherboard so I dunno. Other people suggested taking out the cmos battery but I just feel like this won't fix it... I dunno I might just wait for my friend before I try anything else. I have tried firing it up without the sata or perf and gpu connected and it still wont turn on but the lights are lit up solid on the board and not flickering anymore.. could there be anything obvious that I should do or does it sound like the motherboard is done? Also, if it was the cpu wouldn't the motherboard still start up? Thanks for anything you guys can come up with I appreciate it... everyone I asked that works on computers have no idea what happened but suggest the motherboard probably went bad. Thanks

 

[jimmysmitty]

Getting now power would seem to state what you already know, that the board is most likely bad. You could try removing RAM as well and any USB headers to be sure and see if that works.

 

[puNDuKE]

Getting now power would seem to state what you already know, that the board is most likely bad. You could try removing RAM as well and any USB headers to be sure and see if that works.

Thank you. Wouldn't the board still post bios though even if ram was bad? I also did try turning it on without the usb controls hooked up to the mobo.. do you think I should avoid using the top usb ports on the case when we put the new board in? I am afraid the same thing could happen. I take it it is also good to have a new psu as before it was flickering and now it is not so maybe that was fried as well or part of the problem obviously. What is weird too is I've done that several different times in the past and wondering if cat hair in a usb could cause this to happen as we vacuumed that day and there was light amount of cat hair ontop of the case that day.. I have heard all sorts of things like a virus could even cause that to happen but I never use my phone for internet but I know it could also be within the pc but not sure if it really has anything to do with it just kinda going crazy over the "what if".

This is the new board I ordered:
https://www.amazon.com/ASRock-DDR4-Motherboards-Z170-PRO4/dp/B012D7GBZU/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3JE0L8PL4QR3W&keywords=z170+motherboard&qid=1555284487&s=electronics&sprefix=z170,electronics,182&sr=1-2

I guess I will take care of that Sunday but will let you all know if this ends up fixing my problem... ;p

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I also have another story and who knows it could be related:
I used to have a wired mouse that had a bit of an exposed middle mouse button. Usually on colder mornings it would give us a shock... the weird thing that would happen next is the computer on a different outlet would make the disconnect & connect sound of a device right after. Finally I decided that is it and replaced my mice with wireless. This was a different usb port though and not the one I used at the top. The one at the top also had the wireless dongle on it for some time before I upgraded to a different gaming mouse that I put on the back this time. I used that same one later with my flip phone as I described above when this happened and it was the first time in awhile I used that port which had the wireless dongle in it before so it has worked for some time... weird.

 

[jimmysmitty]

The Vacuum could cause a static discharge, although the case should be grounded enough if you didn't use it inside it shouldn't cause an issue.

I would avoid the top USB for now since we are unsure.

As for POST, it depend on how bad the memory is. I have had boards that will power but not POST and boards that wont power with bad memory or ones that seem to work fine and data gets corrupted or Windows will get a blue screen. I would try with one stick at a time and try to power it so we can cancel them out. I doubt it is the memory but its best to be sure as I have seen a lot of different things that I would never have guessed.

As I said I would most likely say your board is fried, and hopefully the CPU is fine, but its best to test just in case.

 

[puNDuKE]

The Vacuum could cause a static discharge, although the case should be grounded enough if you didn't use it inside it shouldn't cause an issue.

I would avoid the top USB for now since we are unsure.

As for POST, it depend on how bad the memory is. I have had boards that will power but not POST and boards that wont power with bad memory or ones that seem to work fine and data gets corrupted or Windows will get a blue screen. I would try with one stick at a time and try to power it so we can cancel them out. I doubt it is the memory but its best to be sure as I have seen a lot of different things that I would never have guessed.

As I said I would most likely say your board is fried, and hopefully the CPU is fine, but its best to test just in case.

Ah the vacuum thing I was talking about was just saying it might have thrown some cat hair up there and into the port when we were cleaning the carpets is all I ment. Yea I would never take it directly to the computer or to the outside of it but I agree with what you are saying to not do that.

I worry that it could be the cpu since we had this oc... maybe the usb charge or having something connected set it over the edge? I dunno.. I've played some high intensive games for hours without it getting hot at all or shutting down, etc. so maybe not. Voltages and energy can be strange though. Well thanks for the help. Hopefully it will rise from the dead this Easter and I will have a story to tell lol.

 

[jimmysmitty]

In my many years of working on or with computers (I have been using them for 20+ and working on them for over 15) I have only seen 2 dead CPUs. One AMD and one Intel. I even had a system that had a motherboard catch fire and the CPU was good still. Its very hard to kill a CPU.

However there is still a chance but it is very much a rarity.

 

[puNDuKE]

It was the motherboard! It was pretty rough getting the heatsink on.. we did it while it was in the case but not sure what the best method is usually but we pressed each X shaped metal brackets pins through to the other side and we bolted each one but they really didn't want to go through easily. We ended up removing the ram and fans to make it easier to get to them. We were going to get a splitter for the two fans on the heatsink since there is only one input for the cpu fan but I realize we can probably just leave on pushing air through the heatsink instead of both both sides - maybe it's not necessary to pull the air out even though that might help but temps seem to be just fine. Thank you so much for the responses you rock!


UPDATE:
Something interesting about the USB-C cable that probably caused all this trouble... BEWARE

https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10916264/usb-c-russian-roulette-power-cords