Motherboard caught fire?

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Apr 1, 2017
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So earlier I was going to launch Fallout 4 and my PC along with all of the fans and LED lights started flickering and flashing and caused several consecutive restarts. I immediately turned off the power supply and unplugged it. I waited a few minutes and restarted it and my motherboard actually caught fire right next to one of the PCI slots. I turned everything off and took the case apart and did some looking around to see what caused the fire. No dead giveaways so I'm still at a loss. As of right now my PC is up and running and everything *seems* to be working fine.. I even did some gaming without any issues. I took a pic of where the fire started and I'll share the link to the pic in the comments. Any help or insight into this would be appreciated.
 
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Here are the complete specs. Everything in this system was brand new when I built it.
Case - Phanteks Enthoo Pro M
CPU - Intel Core i5-7600k (4.6)
Cooler - Corsair H100iv2
GPU - Gigabyte G1 GTX 1080
PSU - Corsair RM 650x
Memory - G.Skill Aegis DDR4
 
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Here are the complete specs. Everything in this system was brand new when I built it.
Case - Phanteks Enthoo Pro M
CPU - Intel Core i5-7600k (4.6)
Cooler - Corsair H100iv2
Motherboard - MSI z270-A Pro
GPU - Gigabyte G1 GTX 1080
PSU - Corsair RM 650x
Memory - G.Skill Aegis DDR4
 
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Fire as in flames??

For starters switch it off and replace the motherboard; it doesnt really matter if it is working now; it is not going to be any safer after a fire!!

If the board is damaged and overloads the the board power regulation circuits, or the psu; you may have more than a fire to contend with; have you ever seen or heard a capacitor explode ??

The oil they contain will come out boiling hot (and full of hot, metal shards), and may even catch fire.
 
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I think I will have to get a new board soon. I just hate to have to be replacing major components just barely a year after building this system. The power supply is not of questionable quality, it's an 80+ Gold rated fully modular PSU from Corsair.
 
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I had that once with an OLD motherboard back in the amd athlon XP days.. the motherboard maker would NOT replace the board even though it was under-warranty. (never purchased from them again) in my case a capacitor popped and the voltage regulators for the AGP (I think it was called that back in the day) for the vid card fried. only had to replace the board and I was back up and running.
 
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That was my thought as well. I highly doubt my PSU is at fault, also considering it's barely a year old. I will see if I can contact MSI and get this board replaced.
 
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It could have been a defective part on the motherboard that finally failed. But more likely there was a series of brownouts and power surges from the electrical utility.

If the power surge got past your power supply, when you replace the motherboard pick up a better quality power supply at the same time. A quality surge suppressor is a good idea.
 
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Not all motherboard IC failures are mission critical.

You mention the LED lighting and fans flickering.

Your burnt IC is right next to a fan header, audio header, and the TPM module header, and further away a lighting header. Obviously you've no TPM module installed there, and you can clearly see your audio codec chip has no visible signs of damage and your lighting header is unused, so my first guess would be, fan controller IC.

How many amps are you pulling from your fan controllers? Might be good to know because they have rated limits and if you're over doing it and burned up the only, or one of the multiple fan controllers on the motherboard, it could happen again. Since you say the system seems to otherwise be running fine, I would recommend you look to see if the fan plugged into the bottom fan header is working. If most of the fans are working, and just one isn't, I can imagine that might be easy to overlook, especially if it's in the front of the chassis, obscured by the drive cages or other hardware.

Could also be defective equipment that was plugged into that fan header.
 
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Fan header indeed, that chip is repeated quite near each fan header on the board. So you might have lost a fan header, was something plugged into it?

If not my suspicion would be that something like a screw or other conductive object was rolling around down there and shorted it out and blew the chip.

Can't seem to to find a high enough resolution image to read the chip label though.
 
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I contacted MSI and they're going to let me send it in for a new one. All of my fans seemed to be working properly and nothing else seemed to be out of the ordinary after the fire happened. Should I be cautious about using that same header on the new motherboard? I don't want to rule out faulty hardware just yet but like I said after the fire issue was addressed everything else seemed to be working just like they should. I monitored my temps while gaming and the temps didn't indicate anything else was awry.
 
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The most likely candidate for the IC letting loose it's magic smoke is whatever you have plugged into the fan header on the bottom of the motherboard. It may just do it again on your next motherboard if you plug the same device into the same fan header. The motherboard was probably fine, and using that particular fan header should also be fine, but be weary of using the same device on it.

If it happens again, you know beyond a doubt that there is something wrong with whatever it is you're plugging into that particular fan header.
 
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