Question What could have caused this ?

May 24, 2022
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Ok so I’ve been having slight gpu issues for a while but after I shut off my pc the other day I tried starting it in the morning and it would take like 2 minutes for the vram light to turn off on my motherboard. This causes a very long boot time and for some reason my windows was also corrupt. I ended up buying a new motherboard but I’m still curious what could’ve caused the chip to get absolutely destroyed like this. Can someone let me know and explain it?

IMG_3483.jpg
 
Ok so I’ve been having slight gpu issues for a while but after I shut off my pc the other day I tried starting it in the morning and it would take like 2 minutes for the vram light to turn off on my motherboard. This causes a very long boot time and for some reason my windows was also corrupt. I ended up buying a new motherboard but I’m still curious what could’ve caused the chip to get absolutely destroyed like this. Can someone let me know and explain it?
IMG_3483.jpg
maybe you'd damage it while assembling on your pc by coincidence, since i see copper trace scratch and its really bad. very rare for a motherboard could melt the solder by itself.
 
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May 24, 2022
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Make and model motherboard?

Source?

Overall, it looks to me as if that motherboard was poorly manufactured, repaired, or otherwise mishandled.
Very cheap board so not surprised something went wrong but this is a “MSI B350M PRO-VDH” board. It lasted me a while for how much it was so I’m not completely hating on it but this is a weird problem.
 
May 24, 2022
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It actually looks like it was scraped off the board...that based on the scratch leading up to it.

It would be interesting to see a picture less zoomed in, to see the area of the board in which this is located mainly.
It’s in the top right of the board next by all the ram sticks. If you still want a picture I can get one, there’s not much to see.
 
It’s in the top right of the board next by all the ram sticks. If you still want a picture I can get one, there’s not much to see.
It just helps establish what may have happened to scrape off that package. It's probably associated with the VRM circuit it's right next to and in that location the VRM probably powers the memory DIMM's.

I doubt seriously it 'failed' and do believe it was damaged somehow. It might be possible to replace it. But it's an old and low-spec board, not really worth the expense if you have to pay a tech to do the work.
 
May 24, 2022
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It just helps establish what may have happened to scrape off that package. It's probably associated with the VRM circuit it's right next to and in that location the VRM probably powers the memory DIMM's.

I doubt seriously it 'failed' and do believe it was damaged somehow. It might be possible to replace it. But it's an old and low-spec board, not really worth the expense if you have to pay a tech to do the work.
I didn’t touch the board for like 8 months and the problems got worse and worse, and it just eventually died without me touching the hardware at all. Also another thing is that it does look like it was scratched but also if you look around the chip it looks like the solder was melted somehow.
 
... look around the chip it looks like the solder was melted somehow.

Hard to tell much in the photo, it does look melted but then it's supposed to since at one time it was soldered in place during manufacture. I'd look for grayish, granular surfaces typical of a joint that was mechanically broken.

Also: the scratch damage may have just set up a condition for future failure. Break that device but the circuit it is in might have continued operating, but wrongly, until something finally craps out completely and fails. Pure conjecture, of course, but I do believe it ultimately comes back to that mean looking scratch that terminates right at the device's pad location, underneath where it should be located actually. It's impossible to ignore and must be considered in any speculations.
 
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