A Short Rant

[mrSHEiK124]

Rewind to last Saturday. I turn on my computer, get no POST, no beeps. I popped on the side panel and was met with a wonderful solder-y smell. I poke around with a flash light and can't find any damage, but the board (ASUS P5Q Deluxe - RIP) is dead.

I file an RMA online with ASUS.......which for some reason takes them 48 hours to process and turn into an RMA number. Add 24 hours for processing my cross-ship request. Add 48 hours to process cross-ship RMA. Blah blah blah, I have my board in hand at 7 PM today. I also paid $25 to have them overnight it.

Boo-urns, ASUS sent me a refurb board. Usually I can't notice if an RMA is a refurb because they do such a great job refurbishing them, but this one is obviously used, and dusty. Oh well. I put everything together outside the case just to see if it posts, which leads me to my next headache.

I used the adhesive on my Xigmatek's backplate, like an idiot, so now I have to get it off the old board. 10 minutes of carefully using a box cutter, and I have the backplate removed, and no damage to the board. Some of the foam is basically stuck to the old board, so I cut up a 3M Command strip and used it to cover any bare metal on the backplate. Time to clean the heatsink and CPU.

ArtiClean goes on, ArtiClean + crusty AS5 comes off. Everything is now nice and clean, new AS5 goes on. I try and mount the heatsink, and I remember how much of a royal pain in the ass it was, even moreso than the regular pushpins. 15 minutes into it I realize that I put too thick a layer of foam on the backplate, and will never be able to mount it properly, so I take it off.

I lift up the heatsink, and what do you know. The ArtiClean crept in between the heatpipes and the rest of the heatsink, and oozed out all over the CPU, dissolving all of the thermal compound in the process and making nice AS5 soup for me. I'm lucky it didn't seep into the *^@% socket...now I have to clean everything back up.

Alright, all hooked up. ASUS shipped it with an old BIOS, time to find the new one. Board POSTs just fine, ran MemTest for an hour, everything looks good so far. I just hope it hits 3.6 GHz with ease like my original board did...

</rant>

 

[polarbear6]

pray to god u seem to be having bad times
have u been attending those sunday prayer thinges (hey iam no Christian so i dont know what they call it)

 

[Beanie46]

Sorry about your mb problems.....hope your Asus RMA item works better than the last two Asus RMA's I've gotten back.....that had to be immediately RMA'd themselves.

But a box cutter to remove the backplate? Sorry it was so much work, but you made it more work than you needed to do. I've had to remove backplates when upgrading motherboards (D-Tek Fuzion backplate stuck on with same type foam) and have yet to work hard. Of course, I found a much easier method of removal.......or several, actually.

First, my preferred method---I'll soak in between the plate and motherboard with pure iso. alcohol and let sit for 10-15 minutes. Loosens up the adhesive enough to lift almost all of it off in one pull without damaging anything on the board. Alternatively, WD-40 is another excellent adhesive loosener.....inert, foolproof. Just clean with iso. alcohol afterward. (Remember, WD-40 was originally invented to displace water in rocket circuitry and wiring....won't hurt your motherboard.)

Another method I've used is circuit freeze spray. Spray the adhered foam down for 20-30 sec., then pull. The foam becomes brittle and pops right off. Clean area with iso. alcohol afterward.


Think easy.......and don't make your work so hard.

 

[JackMDS]

Let it be the Biggest problem you ever faced in Live.

We treat these things as though they are part of our family, but they are just pieces of Plastic, Silicon, and a little metal.

May be you should take a look at the 3rd sticky at the Top and get another board.

The guy who wrote the Sticky seems to know well the subject. :thumbsup:

 

[nerp]

Man, reading about motherboard RMA experiences here has made me eternally grateful that I've never had to go through such a process myself.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: ganesh1
pray to god u seem to be having bad times
have u been attending those sunday prayer thinges (hey iam no Christian so i dont know what they call it)

Church. That's what they call it. I was raised Christian, very thankful it didn't stick (no lasting damage).

As Jack said, if that's the worst problem you face - you're lucky. I've been working with computers for the last nearly 20 years and in several cases would have been happy if that's all I had go wrong during a build/rebuild.

 

[polarbear6]

Originally posted by: Denithor

Originally posted by: ganesh1
pray to god u seem to be having bad times
have u been attending those sunday prayer thinges (hey iam no Christian so i dont know what they call it)

Church. That's what they call it. I was raised Christian, very thankful it didn't stick (no lasting damage).

As Jack said, if that's the worst problem you face - you're lucky. I've been working with computers for the last nearly 20 years and in several cases would have been happy if that's all I had go wrong during a build/rebuild.

no no. found it, its sunday mass service
)
i knw whats a church
i was unable to get the word mass service

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: ganesh1
pray to god u seem to be having bad times
have u been attending those sunday prayer thinges (hey iam no Christian so i dont know what they call it)

I'm Muslim, but I haven't missed Friday prayer in years!

Originally posted by: Beanie46
Sorry about your mb problems.....hope your Asus RMA item works better than the last two Asus RMA's I've gotten back.....that had to be immediately RMA'd themselves.

But a box cutter to remove the backplate? Sorry it was so much work, but you made it more work than you needed to do. I've had to remove backplates when upgrading motherboards (D-Tek Fuzion backplate stuck on with same type foam) and have yet to work hard. Of course, I found a much easier method of removal.......or several, actually.

First, my preferred method---I'll soak in between the plate and motherboard with pure iso. alcohol and let sit for 10-15 minutes. Loosens up the adhesive enough to lift almost all of it off in one pull without damaging anything on the board. Alternatively, WD-40 is another excellent adhesive loosener.....inert, foolproof. Just clean with iso. alcohol afterward. (Remember, WD-40 was originally invented to displace water in rocket circuitry and wiring....won't hurt your motherboard.)

Another method I've used is circuit freeze spray. Spray the adhered foam down for 20-30 sec., then pull. The foam becomes brittle and pops right off. Clean area with iso. alcohol afterward.


Think easy.......and don't make your work so hard.

Thanks! Will definitely use some isopropyl to get the rest of the pad off the old board, I don't want ASUS to reject my RMA because there was a few mm of foam on the back.

Originally posted by: JackMDS
Let it be the Biggest problem you ever faced in Live.

We treat these things as though they are part of our family, but they are just pieces of Plastic, Silicon, and a little metal.

May be you should take a look at the 3rd sticky at the Top and get another board.

The guy who wrote the Sticky seems to know well the subject. :thumbsup:

I was actually going to get that GIGABYTE P45 board and use this RMA for a beater Core2Duo computer, maybe put a graphics card in it for folding or use it as a hackintosh, but I can't fathom putting a $200 mobo to waste.

Originally posted by: nerp
Man, reading about motherboard RMA experiences here has made me eternally grateful that I've never had to go through such a process myself.

Keep praying you don't have to, it's a pain


Hmm, this refurb seems to have less VDroop than my old board, at least something good came out of it. Just got a random Ntfs.sys BSOD though, time to do some Battlefield 2 stress testing

 

[polarbear6]

Originally posted by: mrSHEiK124

Originally posted by: ganesh1
pray to god u seem to be having bad times
have u been attending those sunday prayer thinges (hey iam no Christian so i dont know what they call it)

I'm Muslim, but I haven't missed Friday prayer in years!

not only that u should read quran four times a day
and even have rosas without fail

iam a hindu and getting soon thread married so i have to do prayers daily
so untill that party for me