HELP! MY CASE IS EATING MY MOTHERBOARDS!

[SlingBlade]

At least that is what I think it must be. Has anyone here ever heard about a case frying motherboards? I was putting a puter together from scratch, and every mobo I put in there refuses to boot. I tried a KA7 Abit (133) and it won't boot. Then I tried an older Abit board I had (BE6) and it booted, but then stoped working after a while. I have tested EVERY SINGLE COMPNENT in my other computer to see if it was the CPU, Video card, etc. They all work. WTF?!!!! Anyone heard of this happening?

 

[Sacotool]

Make sure the the motherboard is grounded correctly.

 

[Howard]

Did you put the rubber feet in so that the motherboard wasn't touching the case? It happens.

 

[SlingBlade]

Nope I didn't. Maybe that is it... but I put my mobo in my OTHER case without any rubber, and it never had any problems. I'll try that though...

 

[XMan]

Now hold on here . . . every time I've mounted a motherboard in my ATX case, I've simply screwed it into the aluminum standoffs . . . the pilot holes are electrically isolated from the PCB, so it shouldn't be a problem, correct? My motherboard has been working fine for the three years I've had my case - all through an Epox Super 7, BH6, AX63 Pro, and a K7M. All worked fine . . .

 

[SlingBlade]

OK I tried that. Could that have fried it? The wierd thing was is that the other one worked for a while, and then fried.

 

[office boy]

Are you sure there's not an extra standoff in there?

 

[Sillyputty]

Could be a bad power supply. I hate to think that you fried all those motherboards, but that'll be your problem before anything else.

 

[Angrymarshmello]

If the motherboard is touching the base in any shape form or fashion it'll get shorted out sooner or later

And that sounds like a bad power supply to me as mentioned above. I certainly doubt all the motherboards could have been shorted out that easily.

 

[lenjack]

Obviously, some part of the board that shold not be contacting the case, is contacting the case. The mounting screwsare not meant to ground the board.

 

[billcat]

Actually the motherboard is grouded by quite a few ways, it's supposed to be grounded or won't work properly. When you install cards into the motheboard and screw them down you run a ground though them from the metal base on the end of each card. I've checked this. Without a good ground the voltage level reference to ground will float and be unstable to any outside noises and fluctuations. It also needs many paths to make sure the whole motherboard has short paths to ground as well. One thing I'd check is your house ground and you power supply as well. Make sure your using a 3 prong house plug and the metal base inside the plug is in fact grounded. Some older houses don't have it grounded even though they have the 3 prong plugin. A friends computer is having all sorts of weird problems that got fixed when he installed a new junction box and ran a earth ground to the computer's 3 prong pluging box. Without it like I said there is no reference to true earth ground and it can float to different levels. The computer can operate but not stable. The way your computer is not working I'd run a voltmeter to it and check your voltage levels in 2 ways, with no load and under loading. A bad power supply can give say a good 3.3v reading in a no load state but after having added loads like video cards and memory pluged in it can drop if its not working proprely or a poor quality power supply. I've been seeing posts of people who start jacking up their 3.3v line to 3.4v or 3.5v for suppose overclocking stability but I've never had to do this even with overclocking running a very loaded computer because using a PC Power 425W supply is such high quality that it's voltages don't drop even under a pretty heavy loaded condition. Some peoples are seeing their voltage dropping down to 3.23v and so on causing erratic
lockups untill they have to raise it.