Does Motherboards have short circuit protection built in them ?

[vishalaestro]

I usually take out the motherboard ,keep it over the case and test whether the board is working or not but suddenly one of my known person said that doing in such way will short out the motherboard but i wonder since the motherboard is connected with power supply it should offer protection from any short circuit or the motherboard itself will contain some short circuit protection.When i tried to turn on the computer by shorting the power pins i saw some sparks and the motherboard did not post anything so i took out the cmos battery and tried again and all was working fine .Therefore i can anyone exactly explained what happened ? is my motherboard has short circuit protection and does keeping the motherboard over a metal surface short circuits the motherboard ?

 

[gilbadon]

There are ton's of short circuit protections placed inside of both the motherboard and power supply. That being said, there are different levels of this protection and there is no use being negligent and over testing this built in protection. Use best practice and avoid shorting out the motherboard because sooner than latter, you will burn it out.

I would say do not place the motherboard on a conductive surface when testing. For an example: shorting the 12V rail to the memory modules for example is pretty easy to do when on a conductive surface and will fry your memory dimm for sure as the protection on the memory is not nearly strong enough to hold the voltage and current coming from the 12V rail..