various psu mobo problems - burnt socket

[Vince Rubinetti]

This one will be a little tough, because I didn't have the good judgement to keep track of exactly what happened and what I did. I will try to recall and list all the problems I've had, in case they're related somehow.

About 3 years ago I built this machine:
Intel i7-2600K
Corsair 750TX
ASRock P67
Ripjaws 8gb x 2
HD 6870 x 2 (Crossfire)
Caviar Black x 2
Samsung 830 x 2
Xonar Essence
Seagate External

Everything worked fine for about a year or two. Several power outages occurred and my apartment's circuit breaker tripped a few times (for other reasons), causing my computer to be forced off, possibly under unusual power loading. One morning, my computer wouldn't display any video output. I had changed absolutely nothing since last boot; no hardware, no software. This happened a couple of times. Fixed it by resetting CMOS (BIOS settings) and/or reseating or shuffling ram positions. Problem subsided for several months. Then, couldn't boot again. Boot sequence couldn't get past the ram stage (based on led codes on the mobo). Made different ram shuffles which worked or didn't work seemingly at random (made damn sure firmly, completely seated each time). But finally determined that it seemed one stick was bad. Rma'd it, vendor verified it was dead. Problem subsided for several months. Then, pressing power button, the case led's and fans would start for about a second, then turn off, then repeat, trying to fully start up. During this, it sounded like the hard drive was successfully spun up and running. I really only "fixed" this by pushing the 24 pin power connector into the mobo more firmly. This was the most persistent of all the problems. But the last push I gave the wires finally stuck for several months, until now. My computer is shutting off multiple times a day randomly while I am working on it. And trying to restart after this unexpected shutdown is the same as the previous problem.

During the previous problem, I noticed that the bottom of the motherboard power socket for pin 11 (and pin 10 somewhat) appears to be singed or burnt as shown:

It's hard to see in real life, let alone get a good picture. But the pin itself doesn't appear to be burnt. Nor are any of the male ends coming from the psu abnormal.

Basically, I'm wondering what the cause of all this is, why it happened, and how I can fix it and avoid it in the future. So far I've ordered a new psu, which has sufficient wattage and amperage on all rails per this tool (pro), as does my existing psu, but I'm pretty sure it warrants replacing under the circumstances and the modularity would be nice to cleanup case clutter. Is it also warranted to go through the hindrance of replacing the motherboard? Is the discoloration at the bottom of the socket a cause for alarm, or does it need to be more severe?

I've found the following references on the issue: link1 and link2 but I wanted situation specific consultation from the experts (you guys 😀) on this.

If I were to replace the motherboard, I would go with the Asus Sabertooth Z77 LGA because it has the best and most ratings for my pcu socket type, which I feel indicates reliability (though it's still far less than ideal) and ability to troubleshoot since it's a common mobo.

The hangups in my workflow this has caused of the years are unacceptable. Plus, I shouldn't have to be constantly worried if my computer is going to start up or randomly shutdown during a productive session. Or moreover, catastrophically fail, leaving me out of work for weeks and out of thousands of dollars. I didn't skimp on this build and I constructed it carefully. I would pay $1,000 for mobo if I knew I would never ever have any problems with it. Reliability is by far the most important thing to me.

Thank you for any help at all. Sorry for the wall of text.

 

[Darkbreeze]

You can never go wrong with a Sabertooth motherboard. I've never personally heard of anybody who was unhappy with theirs. You can buy more expensive boards with a few extra bells and whistles, but at the core, the ASUS boards and specifically the Sabertooth and ROG boards are pretty rock solid.

I'd say it's a good idea to replace the board along with the PSU since there is already visible damage. You don't really want to take the chance that even if the motherboard wasn't the initial cause of the problem, that there isn't now issues in the circuitry of the motherboard resulting from the PSU (If that was the cause) that may damage you CPU or new PSU. And from the looks of that socket, I'd say it's likely it was never locking or staying locked into place completely and you probably had some bridging of the resistance in the circuit going on which created some arcing and heat that burned that area of the socket.

It's possible too that if it wasn't making a great connection the pressing down on the plug created the arcing but in any case it's highly likely to have been related to a poor connection at the ATX power connector or insufficient voltage in the circuit. I'd think a new PSU and motherboard should resolve your issues if nothing further was damaged and everything seems to be ok when it was getting power.

 

[Vince Rubinetti]

Update: The fans on my gpus (and probably psu too, hard to tell) suddenly went into full overdrive, followed by a shutdown some moments later. It really seems like this is a psu problem...

I am replacing the psu immediately, but I'm hoping I can hold off on getting a new motherboard until black friday. Instead of going with the Asus Sabertooth Z77, I think I'm going to go with the Asus Maximus VI Hero and upgrade to an i7-4770k cpu. What do you think about that mobo?

 

[Darkbreeze]

What do you mostly use the computer for? If you use it mainly for gaming, the right i5 provides equal performance in gaming titles as any of the i7 CPUs. If you do a lot of CPU intensive tasks, then the i7 makes more sense. If you do game the Hero is a good choice but if not then a Z97-A will handle all you need and more with the i-7. In any case the Hero is a great board, but the Z97-A is really good and a bit cheaper.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Either of these setups is extremely capable. If you do other CPU intensive stuff the i7 setup (I upgraded it to the 4790k, it's a much better CPU for not that much more than the 4770.) would be great for years to come. If you game a lot, the i5 will still handle the other tasks but will game just as well as the i7.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($317.27 @ TigerDirect)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($137.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $455.26
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-05 18:25 EDT-0400


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($225.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VII HERO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($203.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $429.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-05 18:27 EDT-0400


Even with gaming, you could use the Z97-A with the i5 to shave a few more bucks off and still have a very solid setup. Of course, if money isn't really an issue, the Hero is the better board in any situation.

 

[Vince Rubinetti]

Thank you very much for your input! Given the most recent update about the fans surging, do you think that solidifies it as a psu problem? Do you think I can hold out a couple of months to replace the mobo?

I think I should definitely stick with the i7. The reason I'd like to go for the hero is actually because it has 8 sata III (6 Gbps) slots, 6 of which are able to be raided. As compared to the sabertooth which only has 2 sata III's that can be raided. So the upgrade in cpu is only a necessary side effect, not the reason.

I think I'm going to stick with the hero, not to spite your advice. Due to my past and continued bad experiences with technology, I've adopted the philosophy of only buying parts with the best and most ratings. The most tested, by mass public data, over personal anecdotal evidence. I find the ratings to be the best way to statistically gauge a product's reliability, though not ideal by any means. And if there is a problem, having a popular, standard component gives a much better chance of you finding help or a solution online.

I may go with the 4790k over the 4770k though. Slightly better and only $5 more. We'll see what sales there are soon!

This is off topic, but I'll say it anyway for the possible interest of anyone reading.

I'm a music producer/composer. One of the big virtual instrument tools I use in my work streams a huge amount of data from the drive in realtime to produce the instrument sound, because it's simply too large to be fully loaded into ram (only the beginning of notes are, so they can start playing immediately). Currently the two ssd's I have serve only the libraries from this company that require this approach. They're duplicate drives, but not raided, so I can sort of control the loading on both, eg I'll load the violins from the E: and brass from the F:. But to make it even faster, I'm going to get two more ssd's and raid both pairs to roughly double the speed. Apparently ssd's really do benefit almost linearly from raiding? Anyway, it turns out that having only a sata II (3 Gbps) connection really reduces the random read speed if you have long queue lengths (simultaneous access requests). And these libraries I use, each note sample is in its own separate file, so in a busy orchestral piece, the simultaneous random access could be really high, much higher than it would ever be in a normal desktop environment. So I think I'd really benefit from just going for all sata III. I'm sorta just basing this on my own feeble research and common sense, but still, I'd prefer not to be locked in. It's better to future-proof, as you said.

 

[Darkbreeze]

See, if you had made that clear in the first place I'd have known that you definitely needed the i7, not the i5, especially going forward into the future with the application requirements likely becoming more advanced and the new but as yet unused CPU instruction sets beginning to see implementation it will definitely be beneficial to you.

As far as the 4770k vs the 4790k, there's a pretty good performance gap between the two. The 4790k is 500mhz faster on each core and on passmark 3d scores 1043 marks higher than the 4770k, which is a pretty good amount. It's like the difference between an Athlon II and and i3, which is almost unbelievable, but I guess the numbers don't lie. They might not be entirely accurate as applied to real world use since those are synthetic benchmarks, but it's definitely far more than enough to justify a much more substantial price difference that what there actually is.

As far as the motherboard goes, I totally understand on the requirements for what you need to do. That's the main reason I asked if you were using it for any specific tasks. What somebody uses their system for generally dictates differences in hardware requirements. Also, the Hero has a better audio package, although you probably have a professional soundcard for your uses. Actually, since loading the necessary amount of data into RAM is an issue, perhaps you might want to consider, if immediate budget isn't as big of an issue as long term investment, moving forward to an X99 motherboard and a Haswell-E CPU.

It's a bigger investment, but there are a LOT of features that make it worth it including BIG CPU caches, most of the i7 and Xeons that work with the X99 boards have 10 or 15MB onboard caches which dramatically increase performance, as compared to only 8MB cache on the i7-4790K. The X99 and compatible CPUs also support 64 or 128GB of RAM on most models, which might completely resolve your issue with not being able to load into memory. By the time you factor in the cost of all those SSD's, it might make more sense. Or, you might need the SSD's anyhow, it would certainly still increase capability, plus I am not entirely familiar with the processes involved in the applications you are running so I don't want to act like I'm an expert in that regard, but it certainly seems plausible. Anyhow, just an idea, for now or the future, but considering the possibility of needing to upgrade again later, it might be something you seriously consider.

 

[Vince Rubinetti]

Yeah I agree about the 4770 vs the 4790. The tests showing a large difference between them may be somewhat synthetic, but it's clear there's at least enough difference to justify only $5 more. I'll probably go with the 90. Normally I'd opt for the 4770 because it's more popular and has more reviews, but I think it's safe to say based on Intel's stellar track record lately (all their mainstream processors have near perfect rating) that it will definitely be just as fine as the 70.

As for the music stuff. There are actually some producers who build 128gb ram systems and load it all in there. It is possible. But I guess the main deterrent for doing that is simply to avoid waiting 10 minutes when you open a project. I think no matter what my setup, the ssd's will still be a big necessity. That being said, I will definitely look into your recommendation of going to the haswell-e architecture. It sounds like it could still be hugely beneficial to do that, on top of the ssds.

Thank you so much for all of your help, you've given me lots of valuable information!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Absolutely no problem. If you ever have more questions, related to the task at hand or otherwise, feel free to ask. Good luck.