Damaged motherboard - is this repairable ?

[zoyzoy]

Hi there, i am in a bit of a tricky situation, and i'll gladly take your help !

I recently purchased a MSI B450 Tomahawk max for my first build, and it worked well for a couple of days, until i had to transport my fresh build by car to my apartment.
Unfortunately, the journey was kind of bumpy, and the lower heatsink was detached during the ride, tearing off a square chip from the mobo.
(in a quite clean way i guess, see the pics)

I wanted to know if you guys already had this kind of problem, and know if it is actually worth repairing/soldering back
that chip, or if i should rather return the motherboard to the seller while it is still time (i got it a week ago).

Edit: i want to mention that the plastic stakes that held the heatsink in place were broken at delivery, so it was not very stable, but my bad nonetheless...

Here is a picture of the mess, and of the actual chip :

https://imgur.com/a/Rs1Lnei

View: https://imgur.com/a/Rs1Lnei


Note that i tried booting with the broken motherboard, and everything lit up, except the CPU debug LED (and the screen of course),
which i think is linked to the removed chip.

Thanks for reading me, hope you guys can help !

 

[drivinfast247]

You break it and are gonna try to return it to the seller? Man up and take the loss. Learn from YOUR mistake and move on.

 

[DSzymborski]

Dude, attempting to return it without disclosing that you damaged it is literally consumer fraud. Why would you even think this was an ethical option?

 

[zoyzoy]

Yes i agree, and i'm not really willing to send it back anyway, it would be the my last resort i it was not repairable i guess, and i'll buy a new one 🙁.
Thanks for your frankness, by the way any ideas about this kind of problem ?

 

[DSzymborski]

Yes i agree, and i'm not really willing to send it back anyway, it would be the my last resort i it was not repairable i guess, and i'll buy a new one 🙁. Thanks for your frankness, by the way any ideas about this kind of problem ?

Is it booting up at all? Without seeing where it comes from, it looks you tore off one of the ferrite chokes. Theoretically, a motherboard could run with one of those lapped off, but I would never think of overclocking even if it does work; you're missing a part that deals with voltage regulation that the design believes is there.

If it doesn't boot up, there's a possibility that there's more damaged and this is just the obvious thing. It's not easy to lop one of those off. I've never encountered a board that has that issue, so I'm not even going to guess on the feasibility of soldering. It's likely there's a lot going on there underneath given the dramatic damage the motherboard faced.

This is one of those reasons you see boutique builders always advertise about the "free upgrade!" to liquid cooling. They put in a cheap liquid cooler because it'll actually survive shipping. You never want to transport a PC with a heatsink attached without filling up the rig with padding. Taking it off is always the better route.

 

[zoyzoy]

Thanks for the advice, and no, it doesn't boot anymore, i think its because the chip was a part of the cpu circuit.
By the way, there is only the CPU debug LED that does not lit up, is it because it is failing, or because it is the only one working and the others that are lighting up are failing ?

 

[drea.drechsler]

Thanks for the advice, and no, it doesn't boot anymore, i think its because the chip was a part of the cpu circuit.
By the way, there is only the CPU debug LED that does not lit up, is it because it is failing, or because it is the only one working and the others that are lighting up are failing ?

That's an inductor, of the type that is used to filter one of the many voltages developed from the 12V provided by the PSU. It's usually in series with the voltage, so if it's missing then the voltage is not going to get through to the part it powers.

You may be able to have it soldered back in place. More pictures would be helpful...like the location on the motherboard where it should go.

 

[zoyzoy]

Thanks a lot man ! The second picture shows its normal location, you make me feel like this could be resolved quite simply, thanks a ton again. Just hover the imgur image and you'll see the arrow.

If you zoom you will see that it had 4 soldering points (sorry for my rough english), does that mean that if they are soldered correctly, it could work as normal again ? I really dig your answers guys, hella thanks to you all.

Here are more pictures of the welding points that were cut off:


Welding points

 

[drea.drechsler]

Thanks a lot man ! The second picture shows its normal location, you make me feel like this could be resolved quite simply, thanks a ton again. Just hover the imgur image and you'll see the arrow.

If you zoom you will see that it had 4 soldering points (sorry for my rough english), does that mean that if they are soldered correctly, it could work as normal again ? I really dig your answers guys, hella thanks to you all.

Here are more pictures of the welding points that were cut off:


Welding points

Yes, it could be fairly easily fixed I do believe. It appears it can be soldered back in place with just a common soldering iron. Any decent computer tech should be able to fix you up.