One screw won't go in to the motherboard standoff

G

Guest

Guest
Hi everyone!

I have a Sabertooth Z77 motherboard and a bitfenix colossus case. The problem is one standoff screw hole doesn't alight with the hole in the motherboard and it is REALLY annoying.

What can I do?

X. O. X.


X. X. X.


X X. X.

X=correctly screwed
O=missing screw
 

AcidElement

Distinguished
Oct 30, 2011
134
0
18,690
Yeah missing just one screw won't do much. As long as the motherboard is firmly in place and isn't touching anything on the case other than th standoffs and the I/O back panel you will be A OK.
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
I agree with others. BUT here's something to check. If you have one mobo hole NOT lined up with a case standoff, is there an unused case standoff under the mobo where there is NO hole? If so, that standoff could short out a mobo trace, and it should be removed before trouble! IF that is the case, you MIGHT be able to relocate it to where the mobo does have that unused hole.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Hi, do you advise me to take a look under the mobo, I'm kinda scared to do so as i don't want to damage anything... I had some help lowering in the board and that help isn't available at the moment....
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
Yes and no. To examine under the mobo you really would have to remove any major components you have mounted on it already. That includes any cards mounted in PCI slots, and maybe the CPU cooler system. You probably would not need to remove the RAM modules, or the CPU itself. I'm not sue why installing or removing the mobo in the case is difficult for you, but I don;t know your system.

It is important not to create short circuit contact points under the mobo. But I can understand that sometimes removing and re-installing the mobo to look under it may be so difficult that you would rather avoid it when you do not know there is a problem to fix.
 
G

Guest

Guest
My friend says this is normal to have a missing screw, so you advise me to loosen all the screws a little and try putting in the missing screw and then try tightening them a bit?
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
No. I am not worried about a missing screw. As others said, that will not make any big difference to support for the mobo.

My point is what is UNDER your mobo and possibly making contact. As you have seen, each screw you installed fits into a small "stand-off" of metal under the mobo. At those holes in the mobo, the bottom surface is designed to contact the case metal as a Ground. BUT the fact that you have one hole in the mobo with no stand-off under it make me wonder where the "missing" stand-off is. Maybe there is none, and there is no worry. But IF there is another stand-off somewhere making contact with the bottom of the mobo where it is not supposed to, you could be creating a short circuit to Ground there. If that actually is happening, you need to find that stand-off and remove it. At your option, IF you do find one to remove, you could then install it under the mobo hole with no screw. But the main point is to look for a stand-off in the wrong place and remove it if necessary.
 
Hi, I know this I a very old thread but just recently I moved my system to a bigger case so I can get better airflow which I certainly have got now but while installing the motherboard all the screw went in fully except for the bottom left screw. The rest of the board is secure and I can not move it but the bottom left corner can be wobble up and down by a few millimetres, I asked my dad and said it should be fine.

I'm just wondering a bit as I had sudden problem with all my games yesterday where the frames fluctuated up and down in every games, after doing driver install and windows install it seems to have gone but I was wondering do boards instantly blow if they touch a metal case or can the contact cause just instability with the system such as random frame rate drops.
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
I assume you ARE using the proper stand-offs in mounting your mobo into the new case. If you are, then one missing screw at the corner won't matter. All the other stand-offs are holding the mobo away from the case itself. Even at that loose corner there is a stand-off under the hole - just no screw to hold it down. Is that right?

The mobo is designed to make contact (via the stand-off) with case ground ONLY at those mounting holes. So it is perfectly OK for the loose hole location to touch the metal stand-off under it even missing the screw. This will cause no problems.
 
Naa i mean that i have all the screws in tight except the bottom left one, guessing that they didn't didn't make the screw hole deep enough so that why i cant get the screw all the way in, i wasn't going to back track so much just to remove one stand off to put another one in. Anyway the screw is two thirds in and i'm just the pc right now with no issues.

i just wondered if it was a big issue, it doesn't sound like it is thou.