System has gotten strangely slow after being in fumes

viditkothari

Honorable
Jan 14, 2014
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10,530
About two months ago while I was cleaning the carpet/rug with a vacuum cleaner, incidentally the air outlet of the vacuum cleaner faced my cabinet's front while my PC was switched off but was connected to power supply. After about few minutes I noticed white fume coming out of the cabinet. Seeing which I immediately stopped everything and opened up the cabinet.

I took out the parts PSU (Antec VP 500PC), Memory (Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR4), Motherboard(MSi H, and upon first overview found chemical leaking from the Antec VP 500PC PSU / SMPS. Then tried to look for any other chip burnout but couldn't find any. So I replaced the Antec VP500PC and assembled the PC again.

Upon starting up I see an error in BIOS which I was able to by pass by pressing a key. I thought it must be that due to this fume-event the BIOS program must have gotten corrupted so I downloaded the BIOS update from the MSi's website and updated the BIOS.

Now, after all this I was able to start my computer well and it seemingly functioned well until I noticed something strange.

Since my internet connection is slow and I work on heavy graphic resources on Cloud, I keep my computer running almost all day long for downloads. And it was during these long sessions of downloads that I noticed that my computer becomes slow after long hours of work. Like a human getting exhausted from workout sessions.

After about 5 hours or more of continuous download sessions my computer starts behaving like its too tired to do anything. Any task, be it as simple as hovering or clicking a mouse button seems to take ages after few hours of system on time. Sometime when I use utorrent to share files, after few hours of leaving system turned on the display goes dark and no mouse of keyboard event brings me back to light.

Thing to note here is that I'm able to power on the system easily, the system works very well and smooth (at least during the first few hours since the boot) but after little while of using some application (probably resource-intensive like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, etc) the system seems to get tired and worked up.

What do you think could have gone wrong?:
• Motherboard gone faulty, may be some chip has gone rogue?
• Issue with Memory module?
• Windows got corrupt?
• or something else?

Can you advice on programs or tools that I can use to check if all the parts of my motherboard are working at their 100%, all of memory module is working perfect and that may be a small chip or part of it got fried and is causing the issue.


System Spec:
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core i5 6500 @ 3.20GHz : Skylake 14nm Technology
RAM: 8.00GB Single-Channel Unknown @ 1064MHz (15-15-15-36)
PSU: Antec VP 500PC
Motherboard: MSI H170 GAMING M3 (MS-7978) (U3E1)
Graphics: BenQ VZ2350 (1920x1080@59Hz) • Intel HD Graphics 530 (MSI)
Storage: 931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-60WN4A0 (SATA)
 

Satan-IR

Splendid
Ambassador
Sometimes when a system shows problems after a while it is due to accumulated heat. As you mentioned resource-intensive tasks cause this too it might be heat due to higher work loads.

That incident with the failing PSU might have damaged other parts on the motherboard, SMDs like capacitors for example. If there's a weak link in the chain is in there it might get warm after a while and act up.

You can monitor CPU and system temps for the periods and check whether it goes up when it gets "slow".

You can use Speccy or HWiNFO. The latter has portable versions that do not require installation at:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php

You can also check your HDD with HD Tune or HD Sentinel in the SMART tab to see if the drive is OK.
 

viditkothari

Honorable
Jan 14, 2014
32
0
10,530


Hi,
I tried the HDD check and RAM check but nothing odd came up.
As you said, I do think SMDs like capacitors may have got stranglly damaged such as to keep functioning but with poor performance.

Do you think I can get this issue repaired at MSi service center or the common employees will simply return the motherboard as is, without proper, detailed inspection?
 

Satan-IR

Splendid
Ambassador



Hi,

After fumes and all yes it's highly likely an SMD or even more than one are not functioning fully and may be failing.

You can contact MSI and explain the situation to them and see what they say. It is sometimes not repairable but it wouldn't hurt to ask them. I think it might be eligible for an RMA if under warranty and all.