Have I damaged my mobo? Please reassure me!

[Guest]

Hi,
I'm in currently building a new PC and I fear I might have ruined my Asus CUSL2-C mobo. When attaching the clip of the CPU cooler over the socket with a screwdriver (as per the installation instructions) the screwdriver accidentally slipped ( I had to use considerable forece) and hit the mobo. Now there's a tiny 'scratch' on the mobo surface, right where a lot of 'lines' (probably not the right word) are running (next to the DIMM slots). I've not yet finished assembling the PC completely, but so far all seems to run OK. But I'm a bit afraid something is damaged that might not show up immediately. A friend of mine told me that if the PC boots everything is fine, but I'm not so sure. Is there any way I can fully test all of the mobo functions?
I really need some advice/reassurance here, this PC is for professional use (digital audio) and absolute troublefree performance is critical...

Regards,
Tom

 

[tartarhus]

Lucky bastard. If your pc boots and you don't notice anything out of the ordinary, your mobo is probably fine. You'll know for sure when you load an operating system, but i wouldn't be worried, just grab a beer, maybe two, and for god sakes, stop smashing your board with screw drivers.

You know it's hard to put together a PC with out a well built hammer, but that's just my opintion

 

[Guest]

This is going to be on your mind from now on, no matter what kind of problem you have. Hey, if the application is so important, order another board. At least you will have a spare.

If you want, you could use a non conductive probe and gently press around the area that you scratched. If you have a damaged Land this might be enough to cause a failure. In all likelyhood, all you did was scratch the surface coating, no big deal. Good luck

"I THINK I USED TO KNOW THAT"

 

[Guest]

Yea motherboards are quite resilient...well not really but theyre not completley weak. Im willing to bet as long as you didnt knock off a transistor of capacitor or any other important parts or stab a whole through the board that it should be fine. For it to not work you would have had to actually broke the connection on one of the things. However on a more serious note if after a bit you smell a funny burning or see flames eminating from your mobo you probably shorted something out but even if you did short something itll prollay just shut itself off before it starts a 3 alarm fire! hehe. But more seriously....I wouldnt worry. Try it. If it runs for 30 mins youll be fine. If it doesnt.....uhm....pee on it to put out the fire! Although itd be an electrical fire so hmm that would help, o well =) (Me and my weird ideas)

Good luck,
_RK_

 

[Guest]

Thanks guys! Today I installed the OS and everything (well almost) and all seems fine. Guess it's no use losing sleep over it. But zignif is probably right: if I ever run into a mysterious problem I'll never be sure whether to put the blame on the scratch. But I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and won't buy a new mobo for now (the money's better spent elsewhere, even though a peaceful mind is worth a lot to me ;-) ).

Regards,
Tom