Question JayzTwoCents - Z690 boards burning up?

[VirtualLarry]

Z690 boards (allegedly) burning up, catching fire?

 

[DeathReborn]

Buildzoid from Actually Hardcore Overclocking thinks they have inverted a capacitor's polarity and that is why they are going pop. Some boards have it inverted, others not & some have different brand capacitor in that location.

 

[UsandThem]

This is another reason why I never buy any hardware (GPUs, motherboards, power supplies, etc.) when they are just launched.

I prefer to sit on the sidelines and let all the early adopters deal with all of these headaches (Seasonic PSU + RTX 3090 issues, RTX 3090 cards dying when loading demanding game, GPUs not having thermal pads installed, Gigabyte exploding PSUs, etc.).

 

[Furious_Styles]

Oh man, I'd be angry if I paid the asus z690 premium they are charging and had my board explode on me.

 

[13Gigatons]

I'm still sitting on the fence....hopefully better boards will come out and prices will go down.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The solution? POSCap feeding DRAM VRM MosFETs was fed backwards on the assembly line?

 

[UsandThem]

At least Asus handled the issue a LOT better than Gigabyte did when news of their exploding power supplies began popping up:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-owns-up-to-fiery-z690-motherboard-flaw-starts-recall-program

Interestingly, YouTuber Buildzoid's theory of the root cause was correct (more on that after the statement). It all boils down to a capacitor that Asus inadvertently installed backward. Here's Asus' statement:

"To our valued ASUS Customers, ASUS is committed to producing the highest quality products and we take every incident report from our valued customers very seriously. We have recently received incident reports regarding the ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard. In our ongoing investigation, we have preliminarily identified a potential reversed memory capacitor issue in the production process from one of the production lines that may cause debug error code 53, no post, or motherboard components damage. The issue potentially affects units manufactured in 2021 with the part number 90MB18E0-MVAAY0 and serial number starting with MA, MB, or MC.

 

[Hotrod2go]

In light of these Z690 mobo problems now (glad I didn't jump on that train when I was upgrading) Z590 is underestimated platform & with bad press from early rocket lake reviews not helping either. This platform has matured obviously with bios updates giving it more friendly OC potential & stability for the enthusiasts out there.
Beware early adopters!

 

[DeathReborn]

In my view the fatal flaw in Alder Lake/Z690 is the memory, at least DDR5. It seems like 4 slots is virtually wasted, the topology is flaky at best & the scalpers have already shot prices to the moon. This goof by ASUS is just another in a line of issues DDR5 faces in it's first outing.

 

[fleshconsumed]

This is another reason why I never buy any hardware (GPUs, motherboards, power supplies, etc.) when they are just launched.

I prefer to sit on the sidelines and let all the early adopters deal with all of these headaches (Seasonic PSU + RTX 3090 issues, RTX 3090 cards dying when loading demanding game, GPUs not having thermal pads installed, Gigabyte exploding PSUs, etc.).

Yeah, this is why I'm happy as a clam with my AMD systems. Very few issues. I'll just keep upgrading CPU to Zen3/Zen3DVcache until Zen4+/Zen4Refresh is out and DDR5 memory prices are down to a reasonable level.

On the other hand, people who got 3090 at launch made out like bandits in the current market...

 

[UsandThem]

Yeah, this is why I'm happy as a clam with my AMD systems. Very few issues. I'll just keep upgrading CPU to Zen3/Zen3DVcache until Zen4+/Zen4Refresh is out and DDR5 memory prices are down to a reasonable level.

On the other hand, people who got 3090 at launch made out like bandits in the current market...

Yeah, the last two years has pretty well been suck for PC hardware. From prices to availability, to some really dumb manufacturing snafus, it hasn't been good.

Before the whole mess, I would have bought this Noctua themed GPU in a heartbeat (I like the Noctua brown), but for $1300 for a RTX 3070? Hell no.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Yeah, the last two years has pretty well been suck for PC hardware. From prices to availability, to some really dumb manufacturing snafus, it hasn't been good.

Before the whole mess, I would have bought this Noctua themed GPU in a heartbeat (I like the Noctua brown), but for $1300 for a RTX 3070? Hell no.

I've heard the announcement but never checked it out. 4 slot cooler LOL, that's essentially same size as Raijintek Morpheus II with two full size 120mm fans slapped on it.

IMO Asus Tuf GPUs do an excellent job balancing price/noise/size/cooling ratio, but in this market you get what you can get and don't question it. I managed to score 3070FE on one of the BB drops and I count myself super lucky since I was long due for an upgrade from my RX480 8Gb. Here's to hoping that ETH PoS upgrade goes as planned mid 2022 so that floodgates of used GPUs open up in the second half of 2022 and everybody who wants a card can get a card.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Official Recall on those boards.

 

[yacoub]

In light of these Z690 mobo problems now (glad I didn't jump on that train when I was upgrading) Z590 is underestimated platform & with bad press from early rocket lake reviews not helping either. This platform has matured obviously with bios updates giving it more friendly OC potential & stability for the enthusiasts out there.
Beware early adopters!

fwiw, my Asus z590 E-Gaming board was nothing but problems and my z690 Maximus Hero has been flawless. Thankfully mine appears to be from a different production run, so unless they expand the recall beyond MA, MB, MC, it should be okay. The part number on mine is also slightly different, with a different character in the second digit of the "MVAAY0" string. I hope this further distances mine from the problematic batches. I'd definitely be bummed if I spent the extra coin for this "premium" board as a way to hopefully avoid the pain that was the z590 series, only to have it pop a cap or burn.

 

[Hans Gruber]

MSI and Asus are my only choices when considering motherboards. I have had some good gigabyte boards in the past but too many misses. Asrock, looks good on paper but their bios are not good.

 

[Hotrod2go]

fwiw, my Asus z590 E-Gaming board was nothing but problems and my z690 Maximus Hero has been flawless. Thankfully mine appears to be from a different production run, so unless they expand the recall beyond MA, MB, MC, it should be okay. The part number on mine is also slightly different, with a different character in the second digit of the "MVAAY0" string. I hope this further distances mine from the problematic batches. I'd definitely be bummed if I spent the extra coin for this "premium" board as a way to hopefully avoid the pain that was the z590 series, only to have it pop a cap or burn.

As a consumer, we pretty much just get what we can get these days. Supply chain issues will be worse this year than last & there is no time limit on that problem into the foreseeable future if this news article is anything to go by that affects Australian consumers, but I think that is the case with much of the world now.