General > General Technical Chat
New PC
grumpydoc:
So, I fried the motherboard in my PC.
In my defence this is the first time I have actually fried a motherboard in, well, forever - guess it had to happen sometime. Quite disappointed just how easy it was.
The old board was an Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming-itx/ac with an i7-8700k - to be honest much gaming is an aspiration rather than anything else. It is too much of a time sink for one thing - but it gets used for Photoshop, a bit of video editing and transcoding and a few other things where some CPU grunt is useful.
I had been considering upgrading to an i9-9900k, but I didn't really want to go for an entire new platform just yet.
Among the constraints are - ITX board, not sufficiently different that my windows 10 installation refuses to activate and must have at least 4 SATA ports (though I think that's a given on modern boards); thunderbolt would be nice given that USB 4 is some way away but not essential. I usually overclock but rarely more than trying to get all cores up to the full turbo, I don't want to go totally mad with the spending either.
I figure my options are
1) replace M/B like-for-like. The preferred option except that the M/B is old enough not to be in stock anywhere but new enough not to be on eBay.
2) Get a new (different) Z390 board ± i9-9900k. OK, doable but quite a lot of money for a platform that is now obsolete. Plus the old board was probably the best ITX Z390 board going and everything I've looked at seems to be a downgrade (in particular losing Thunderbolt even though I have nothing to plug in there at the moment).
3) Get a Z490 board and an I7-10700k. Pretty much the same CPU as the 9900k but in a 10th gen cloak and a hundred quid cheaper, M/B probably the Asrock Z490M-ITX/ac - the Z490 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 looks nice but I'm not clear what I get for nearly double the price (except Thunderbolt). The trouble with this approach is you do rather get the notion that 10th gen will quickly give way to 11th gen now that PCIe 4.0 is here, but missing from these chips and USB 4.0 is just around the corner (? Thunderbolt killer).
4) Go with a Ryzen 9 3900X and AM4/X570 motherboard - bit of a step into the unknown and I have no idea if Windows 10 would sulk - but, as far as I can tell, the 3900X runs rings around the i7-10700k.
Does anyone have any suggestions - in particular, has anyone moved a Windows 10 installation from recent Intel to AMD and what were the problems, if any.
Monkeh:
I'd say go for replacing it with a Ryzen system if you're going to go for any upgrade.
NiHaoMike:
Try to fix the board? Start by checking if you get 5V on the port that was shorted and trace back if there isn't. There's a good chance the problem is a burned trace, fuse, or inductor.
grumpydoc:
--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on June 14, 2020, 01:29:51 am ---Try to fix the board?
--- End quote ---
That is certainly a nice idea.
Yes, I had hoped that it would be a fuse somewhere on the board, I don't know whether I'd expect the +5Vsb line to run "directly" (ie just through fuses or inductors) to the USB Vcc lines or whether there would be any form of power conversion or gates in the way.
I have located 5 fuses on the board, three almost certainly for various USB interfaces labelled UF1, UF2 and UF3 - all perfectly intact, including the one obviously associated with the type A socket involved in the incident.
A further one is, I think, associated with the Ethernet Phy (labelled IPHYF1), also intact (no reason that it should have blown).
A final one labelled D4F1 is inaccessible as it is crammed down between a SATA connector and one of the DIMM sockets.
--- Quote ---Start by checking if you get 5V on the port that was shorted and trace back if there isn't.
--- End quote ---
That's where things get complicated - ITX boards tend to be pretty crammed. The PCB will be, what? 10 layer at least - the +5Vsb line clearly connects to an inner layer straight from the ATX PSU connector and similarly the USB supply is not connected top or bottom of the board at the USB port.
Chances are the fault is not too far "downstream" as the Ethernet should be powered for wake on LAN and isn't - so it is where the supply is still common to both USB and ethernet.
I can't even physically get at a lot of the components anyway because they are crammed in between larger things like sockets - this is the area between the ATX connector and the DIMM slots - no chance of replacing anything down there.
--- Quote from: Monkeh on June 14, 2020, 12:49:45 am ---I'd say go for replacing it with a Ryzen system if you're going to go for any upgrade.
--- End quote ---
I'm certainly tempted but reluctant in case W10 or Office refuse to activate on the new hardware - and I don't relly want to have to start from scratch and re-install everything as I'm not sure where all the product keys are, this disk image dates back to W7 and it might even have started out as XP before that and been serially upgraded since (yes, I know "sweeping out the cobwebs" is occasionally a good idea :) )
grumpydoc:
Of course if anyone knows where to get a schematic for the board it might be possible to see if a repair could be attempted.
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