9th or 10th gen Intel? (on apropos of mobo fire)

[Tamas]

I replaced the PSU in my PC because I thought the old one died and that's why it stopped starting up just after half a second of spinning up the fans.

But once I managed to connect everything properly I was back to square one. I was kind of hoping I could spot a warning led or something so I tried to turn it on 3 or 4 times in quick succession.

At which point the motherboard caught fire. 

I will ask a shop tomorrow to check if anything else got fried, but unless they give me a really good price on replacing the motherboard I am thinking of ordering a new rig with a better xlu, then adding my drives and graphics card into it.

If I want to go just 9th gen Intel instead of 10th will I be losing much?

[Grey Fox]

Why are you disqualifying the Ryzen series?

[Tamas]

I want single thread performance, plus yuck AMD.

[Josquius]

Flight simulator did this?

[Tamas]

Flight simulator did this?

Well I have no better guess.  But it was working fine until yesterday morning when it refused to turn on.

Spoke to the local repair guy on the phone. His educated guess is that the GPU got faulty, the mobo refused to start due to that, and when I did the 3-times quick power on I overrode the block and fried the motherboard. He said he'd look for a spare mobo to risk checking my GPU with.


It's a bloody Nvidia 1660 I bought back in December, there's guarantee on it but that's gonna be a pain.

Had a quick run with the customiser at the shop's page where I bought my current PC. Comparing a 10600K plus Asus Prime Z490P vs. a 9600K with Asus Prime Z390A (otherwise same setup), came out practically at the same price, 732 vs 722 pounds respectively.

This is without drives or GPU as I fully expect to salvage at least the drives from the old build. It is quite pricey, but buying the old motherboard again would be 140-ish and I would be still sitting with a rig that was midrange 4 years ago.

[Tamas]

Well I am too much of a gaming addict and I had my mind pretty much set on the basic config idea to diddle around much, new rig has been ordered.

FRACTAL DESIGN R5 case
Intel Core i5 10600K
ASUS PRIME Z490-P - USB3.2 Gen2, SATA6 + M.2 + RGB
16GB DDR4 3200Mhz - CORSAIR - Vengeance LPX
700W PSU - BE QUIET! Pure Power 11 Gold - 92% Efficiency (High Gaming)

I have kept my old 1060 Nvidia card so I am going to use this with that until I can confirm the 1660 did not fry the mobo or I get the warranty replacement sorted.

[viper37]

the i5 sucks at everything but gaming.  It's a shame.  Ryzen is the superior overall choice.
At least, you can overclock the k-series of CPU.

Good choice of PSU and Ram.  Corsair has a lifetime warranty and they pay for the cost of shipping, unlike G.Skill.

[Tamas]

Thanks for the feedback.


Just realised that assuming my SSD did not get fried I will not need to reinstall Win10, as my now defunkt old pc is linked to my Microsoft account so supposedly I will be able to log in and switch the licence to the new hardware config as a hardware update.

[Caliga]

Just realised that assuming my SSD did not get fried I will not need to reinstall Win10, as my now defunkt old pc is linked to my Microsoft account so supposedly I will be able to log in and switch the licence to the new hardware config as a hardware update.

Yeah, I'm curious how well/if this actually works with new builds.

[Tamas]

Could a cheap WiFi card put into a PCIE slot (tiny card put into a large PCIE slot as I couldn't access a small one) develop some electric failure over time big enough to set a fuse on fire? Or it had to be something more substantial like the GPU?

I am quite frustrated I forced my motherboard to set itself on fire before I could pinpoint which component was the culprit. I will give the local PC guy a day or two more to find me a spare motherboard to test with, otherwise I need to find somebody else.

I have removed the motherboard from the case and could clearly see it was a fuse labelled P 160 that caught fire (there are a few of those on it). Couldn't find a fuse mapping diagram for the motherboard to determine what exactly it was connected to. But I did find one source that said that these P 160 fuses on mobos are used to defend the motherboard from a faulty equipment.

[viper37]

Just realised that assuming my SSD did not get fried I will not need to reinstall Win10, as my now defunkt old pc is linked to my Microsoft account so supposedly I will be able to log in and switch the licence to the new hardware config as a hardware update.

Yeah, I'm curious how well/if this actually works with new builds.

yes, it does.

[viper37]

Could a cheap WiFi card put into a PCIE slot (tiny card put into a large PCIE slot as I couldn't access a small one) develop some electric failure over time big enough to set a fuse on fire? Or it had to be something more substantial like the GPU?

no.  maybe.  Yes.


The wifi card in a PCIe slot is ok in itself.  So that's no.

Did it cause your mobo to take fire?  IDK.  The "cheap" part makes it a maybe.  Combined with what you did, it's possible.  Was it this?  I have no idea.

The GPU is a more likely culprit, because that's what draws the most power from the board, alongside the CPU.  But I do no know electronics enough to go beyond that.

[Tamas]

Thanks!

[Caliga]

I had a board catch on fire once too, but it was so long ago (circa 2003) that I don't remember what caused it.

Believe it not, the board still worked after that.

[Tamas]

New rig has arrived.

I have moved over everything except two of the 3 RAM modules I had (don't ask) and the GPU, and it hasn't exploded in fact it is working fine.

Win10 didn't do any fuss, prompted me to re-login to my account and that was it never mentioned activation, but when I looked it up in the system it said it's activated.

As my use of the old config ended abruptly, I did have to uninstall the old Asus software stuff that was now confused (my new mobo is also Asus though, I like Asus. Asus).

So I am chatting with Amazon to get my warranty, in the meantime I am back on the trusty old Nvidia 1060