Oil stains near vrm, harmful?

devor110

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I was cleaning my case from dust when I noticed something wet around my vrm on my msi 970 gaming mobo, upon closer inspection (smelling) it turned out to be oil or grease of some sort, is that harmful in any way? How the heck did it get there?
 

devor110

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I've got 2 cheap as dirt 40mm standard case fans as well as a CM 212 Evo but neither should be in a position where a drop of grease would fall where it did
 

devor110

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Actually the vrms are constantly overheating without extra case fans, and they have been doing it since I got a CM 212 Evo installed as a cpu cooler, I had a whole 2-page thread on that issue but in the end I decided that if a couple of case fans eliminated the problem then I won't worry, but the guy who installed the Evo might have screwed something up

 

devor110

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It 11pm and I don't want to turn the lights on but I think you can clearly see the stain http://imgur.com/a/z11tJ

 
It could also be the suspension fluid used in the TIM used between the VRM and it's heatsink. Some cheaper TIM's use an oily suspension fluid that can separate from the solid when heated.

If you are having your VRM's overheating, this is likely what has happened. It might be worth it to remove the heatsink, clean off the old TIM and apply new TIM.
 

devor110

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Sadly it's late right now but I'll definitely look into it tomorrow, also what kind of tim should I use? Would a standard cpu cooler thermal paste work?
 


Yes, any decent TIM will be fine. Just be sure to clean up the old stuff off of the VRM's and the heatsink before applying the new.

Also it's not completely clear from the photo, what is that at the bottom left corner of the VRM heatsink in the little white silkscreened square? Is that a pushpin for the heatsink?
 

devor110

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I have been trying to decipher the last part for the past 5 mins, I really don't know what you mean, could you draw a red circle where you see that thing?

 
Sorry, silkscreening is the printing on the motherboard. I have edited your photo and attached it below:

Leaked%20TIM.jpg


Hopefully that will illustrate what I mean.
 

devor110

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Sorry for the late reply I was away from home and my phone didn't want to load the pic for some reason, but now it has. The thing you highlighted is the screw that holds the heatsink in place, or so I think, but I'll confirm once I get home and start looking into the problem

 

devor110

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UPDATE

I checked how the heatsink was mounted and the thing you pointed out on the picture is the tip of a screw most likely, the problem is i can't remove it because the screw goes through the mobo (obviously) and the nut of the bolt is on the side. You see this pc ws basically gifted to me a year ago ( or otherwise it would have nvidia and intel in it over amd but i digress) and i never took it apart. I also have a really cheap and old case, so getting the motherboard installed was a bit tricky, according to the IT guy who installed it, so i have no idea where to start even, not that i really want to take it apart entirely. So for now the grease stain remains and it's cause unrevealed, but sometime in the near future i'll take the PC to the IT guy and have him dismantle it.
 
Yeah if you aren't the one who assembled the system and you aren't comfortable doing this kind of thing, then it's probably better to get someone who is comfortable doing this to do it for you.

If I'm correct the oil itself shouldn't harm anything other than all the dust sticking to it. However the result seems to be that your VRM's might not be getting cooled as well as they could be.

 

jay_rogers

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I agree. This is that issue may be. The capacitor can leak from top to bottom. Also check whether your computer is boot or not when you are shutting down. Replace some of the components if need.
 


This isn't a leaky capacitor. The electrolytic inside capacitors is a dark brownish color and dries crusty, it doesn't look oily. Beyond that, the leak doesn't originate from a capacitor, it leads from the bottom of the heatsink. Furthermore, the caps you can see in his photo are solid caps or polymer caps which don't have a liquid electrolytic.

For clarification this is what it looks like when a capacitor leaks:

capblown_6.jpg


capblown_10.jpg
 

OxyHack

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Hey, I was curious if you had fixed the issue and what was the cause and route to repair. I just pulled everything out of my old case and dropped it in a new pretty h440. But my PC is booting up, I can get into bios but as soon as windows starts to load, it just shuts down on me. Looking at it now I have the exact same thing in the exact same position as your "oil leak". And I wonder if maybe with the extra pull of juice maybe that's what triggering a sort of short and shutting down my PC. My 970 is less than 3 months old :(. Don't feel like rma incase it takes too long, if I can fix myself I will
 

Kristpops

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I've got identical motherboard to yours and i've got the same problem, it has been like that for a while, at start it was a really small spot now it's a bit more spread out. I think it's coming from VRM's. I have been using my motherboard for quite a while with that stain, i haven't had any problems yet. I read some discussions in msi forum and many people told if it's not smelling it should be fine. They wrote that it's some kind of oil from cleaning process.