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]

Try to fix the board?

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.

Start by checking if you get 5V on the port that was shorted and trace back if there isn't.

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.

I'd say go for replacing it with a Ryzen system if you're going to go for any upgrade.

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.

[NiHaoMike]

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.

Connect your DMM in continuity mode to the USB port and just randomly tap the SMD components near the ATX connector checking for sustained beeps. Repeat with the 5Vsb line. The component that is connected to both on different pins is a prime candidate.

Have you tried backfeeding 5Vsb onto the USB port? Not much to lose if the board is unusable otherwise.

[grumpydoc]

Connect your DMM in continuity mode to the USB port and just randomly tap the SMD components near the ATX connector checking for sustained beeps. Repeat with the 5Vsb line. The component that is connected to both on different pins is a prime candidate.

Well, yes - it runs to the diode that you can see (D17) just above the +5Vsb pin (4th in from the right at the top of the ATX connector).

Said diode does have a rather suspicious forward voltage of 1.75V

Attempting to remove it resulted in a melted DIMM slot but little else.

As you said the board was toast anyway

[wraper]

I doubt the motherboard is out if it's 3 year warranty, so why don't you just RMA it?
EDIT: Ah, you already melted DIMM slot.

As you said the board was toast anyway

Toast which should have been under warranty.

[Monkeh]

I doubt the motherboard out if it's 3 year warranty, so why don't you just RMA it?

Well, now that he's melted bits..

Anyway, some don't believe in using warranties as insurance against their own mistakes. Would you take a new car you crashed back to the dealer and insist it be repaired under warranty?

[wraper]

Anyway, some don't believe in using warranties as insurance against their own mistakes. Would you take a new car you crashed back to the dealer and insist it be repaired under warranty?

Frankly if motherboard dies because of shorting USB pins, it's a crappy design. It's like a car with engine falling off when you drive over a bump.
Here is example https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/421670/Can+a+defective+or+shorted+mouse+cause+my+motherboard+to+burn

[grumpydoc]

Anyway, some don't believe in using warranties as insurance against their own mistakes.

I'd tend to be one of that group, but...

Frankly if motherboard dies because of shorting USB pins, it's a crappy design.

I also rather agree with the above. The designer presumably thought that it was enough to put PCB fuses in line with the USB Vcc - but, as we all know, the electronics has a habit of protecting the fuse more often than the other way round.

However the board is just over 18 months old which is outside Asrock's warranty - admittedly if it were a warranty issue I'd try arguing that it has to be a minimum of two years in the EU (we'll presumably lose that line of argument in December) - but, I bought it from Scan and it can be impossible to get them to take genuine returns, much less questionable ones.

If I had more room to work I'd try just bypassing the diode with a bit of wire soldered over it and see what happened.

[bd139]

Scan are easy to deal with. Threaten chargeback and they sort it. Works every time.  I tend to buy stuff of CCL / Amazon these days though as they are far easier to deal with.

If you buy a new one go with Ryzen. Grunt per £ is far better and honestly the architecture is less chock full of unfixable nasty bugs than the Intel CPUs seem to be at the moment.

Edit: also to mention, the ITX boards while nice and compact usually have a couple of compromises. Firstly the VRMs are skimpy and barely heat-sunk usually which can lead to long term reliability issues. And secondly they make heavy space economy on the board so you may have an inferior USB port implementation. They should have MLV + PTC on the lines. I would replace it with a mATX or full ATX board if you can.

[wraper]

However the board is just over 18 months old which is outside Asrock's warranty - admittedly if it were a warranty issue I'd try arguing that it has to be a minimum of two years in the EU (we'll presumably lose that line of argument in December) - but, I bought it from Scan and it can be impossible to get them to take genuine returns, much less questionable ones.

None of Asrock products have 18 months warranty AFAIK. And particular motherboard has 36 months warranty.
EDIT: You can also RMA it directly to Asrock.

[grumpydoc]

None of Asrock products have 18 months warranty AFAIK. And particular motherboard has 36 months warranty.

Can't see 3 years mentioned anywhere

It is a moot point, this is not a warrantable failure.

[wraper]

None of Asrock products have 18 months warranty AFAIK. And particular motherboard has 36 months warranty.

Can't see 3 years mentioned anywhere

It is a moot point, this is not a warrantable failure.

It is mentioned at most review sites. Link for RMA: https://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp

It is a moot point, this is not a warrantable failure.

Don't see a single reason why it isn't. You didn't touch any internal parts of computer or apply any voltages.

[Monkeh]

None of Asrock products have 18 months warranty AFAIK. And particular motherboard has 36 months warranty.

Can't see 3 years mentioned anywhere

It is a moot point, this is not a warrantable failure.

It is mentioned at most review sites. Link for RMA: https://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp

Review sites are not authoritive. Plus, their own website says this is not covered. And it's now further damaged, so game over.

[grumpydoc]

It is a moot point, this is not a warrantable failure.

Don't see a single reason why it isn't. You didn't touch any internal parts of computer or apply any voltages.

I am sure that there are people who would try a warranty return in these circumstances but it does not seem moral to me to do so. I might not have applied any voltages but I certainly applied an out of spec resistance.

Anyway, as observed, they are unlikely to let me get away with a warranty return now.   

Scan are easy to deal with. Threaten chargeback and they sort it. Works every time.  I tend to buy stuff of CCL / Amazon these days though as they are far easier to deal with.

Yes, I've got close to resorting to that but usually won out just ahead of that step.

If you buy a new one go with Ryzen. Grunt per £ is far better and honestly the architecture is less chock full of unfixable nasty bugs than the Intel CPUs seem to be at the moment.

If it were a fresh build I think I would go with the Ryzen 9 3900X as above but I think I have decided to stick with intel for the moment.

Edit: also to mention, the ITX boards while nice and compact usually have a couple of compromises. Firstly the VRMs are skimpy and barely heat-sunk usually which can lead to long term reliability issues. And secondly they make heavy space economy on the board so you may have an inferior USB port implementation. They should have MLV + PTC on the lines. I would replace it with a mATX or full ATX board if you can.

Nod

However the corner the PC currently lives in is too small for a full ATX case, besides I prefer SFF systems even with their inherent compromises (especially cooling).

Some of the Z490 boards have fairly decent VRM setup - eg the MSI Z490I which I'm leaning towards (but there's also the ASRock Z490M-ITX, I'm both attracted to and put off by the price of that board). I've never "lost" a board to VRM failure though, even in some cramped and overly warm cases.

[NiHaoMike]

Now that you have determined there's just a diode from 5Vsb to the USB port, try adding one from 5Vsb to the USB port using a bodge wire on the back of the board?

[grumpydoc]

The diode was a red herring - reverse biased across the +5Vsb line, could not find continuity anywhere I thought the board looked workable with my limited skills.

Didn't feel like bodging 5V to the USB socket directly - I don't really want to risk frying the CPU which would net me £200 towards the upgrade on eBay (or I could use it to upgrade my son's PC now that he's more into gaming).

It was an agonising decision - the current crop of Ryzen 7 & 9 CPUs look really good but I went with an i7-10700k and an MSI Z490I ITX board. On paper this is "PCIe 4.0 ready" so, in theory, there will be an upgrade path to 11th gen CPUs but time will tell.

Time will also tell whether W10 and Office sulk because of the hardware change.

[rrinker]

 Don't worry about Windows 10. My main system died a couple of weeks after starting stay at home, so I built a completely new system - new everything, and on top of it, an AMD CPU instead of Intel. Naturally, Windows 10 wouldn't activate, but there is an option about replacing the hardware. Selected that and it activated just fine. I did name it the same, but it's a different IP.

[rdl]

For the consumer versions of Windows 10, I doubt Microsoft really cares anymore if the install is "legal" or not. Selling the OS is not how they plan to make money. Office may be a different story. There's always Libre Office as an alternative, which I have used for many years now.

[bd139]

Yep. Getting you to pay up for Office 365 is the cash cow. They don't care about the OS.

And quite honestly O365 is excellent now. 55 quid for a year. That works across 5 people with 5 devices each and gives 1TB storage each and works on mac, windows, ios, android, the lot.

[grumpydoc]

Don't worry about Windows 10.

I'm not, especially - W10 activation keys can be had for a few quid. I know they are not exactly legit but the original OS and upgrades have all been paid for and kosher so I'm not too worried abut that.

For the consumer versions of Windows 10, I doubt Microsoft really cares anymore if the install is "legal" or not. Selling the OS is not how they plan to make money.

It was always said that M$ didn't really care about individual piracy at all beyond token gestures - they recognised that someone who pirates a copy of Windows was unlikely to ever pay, nor worth suing and just keeping an alternative OS off that particular seat was worth it to them.

Corporate piracy was always different, of course, they tended to be pretty unforgiving if they found you were running multiple seats without paying.

Office may be a different story. There's always Libre Office as an alternative, which I have used for many years now.

Yes, LO is used on the Linux boxes, plus one VM that is running W10 which doesn't need a copy of Office but could do with being able to edit Word files occasionally.

Yep. Getting you to pay up for Office 365 is the cash cow. They don't care about the OS.

And quite honestly O365 is excellent now. 55 quid for a year. That works across 5 people with 5 devices each and gives 1TB storage each and works on mac, windows, ios, android, the lot.

Everyone who is anyone is moving to subscription models - as you say it is the gift that keeps giving.

Which is why all my copies of Office have been one-off licences.

And the only cloud storage that I trust is that which is under my sole control.

No, it's not Windows - it's Office (2013 I think, on this installation), it's my ancient copy of Photoshop CS5 which still does everything I want - at least I think I still have the install files and keys for that, other stuff I've paid for and use occasionally enough to be useful but not frequently enough to feel obliged to spend more money on and just the simple hassle of reinstalling everything - even if free.

I'm rapidly going off the MSI board though.

Out of the box it won't boot from "legacy" partitioning, even if the disk is otherwise set for UEFI boot. This now seems to fall under an UEFI module called the CSM which isn't there in the stock BIOS. An upgrade is available which includes/implements the CSM and it does, indeed, boot a non-GPT disk (actually USB stick, I'm stiff trying to figure out if the board is a "keeper") but it then becomes impossible to get back into the BIOS to do any setup - hitting DEL during boot stops it booting but it does not go into setup, removing all the boot devices (which normally makes it drop into the BIOS setup and it just hangs with a blank screen (probably a single bug preventing it getting to the setup screen in both scenarios). The only way back is the clear CMOS button.

Of course the disk has a normal DOS style partition table and boots from the MBR so I can't boot the old disk. Fortunately it is a dual-boot setup with Windows actually chain-loaded by Grub so if I can update the partition table to GPT and update Grub to UEFI I might still be able to boot Windows (but I have a horrible feeling I've been here before and W10 needs to be installed on a GPT partition table to work on a GPT partition table and even if nothing moves it breaks if you go from the DOS scheme to GPT).

Plus it has an RTL8125 2.5Gbps Ethernet chip - great, Linux has had support for this chip for almost a year - just not this variant of it.

Thankfully there is a vendor driver with source code which looks as though it supports this revision (and a MAC driver derived from it) so I should be able to compile that - or hack the changes into the standard driver.

So, probably not insurmountable, and probably I'd hit the same issues with other boards (or even Ryzen) but definitely not the drop-in replacement I'd hoped for.

[VK3DRB]

My old i5-3570K PC needed replacing a few months ago. It had a motherboard issue (USB3 ports dead, intermittent boot issue), and the PSU died. Could no be bothered fixing the problems, as the old PC was relatively slow.
 
I use Altium a lot, which is somewhat demanding from a CAD perspective. I don't waste my time on games. I did my homework. Here is what I got for the best bang per buck:

1. AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU.
2. Gigabyte motherboard B450M DS3H.
3. 32GB DDR4 RAM.
4. GeForce GT 1030.
5. An Aizo KB506 keyboard.
6. Intel 512GB SSD for O/S and program files.
7. VG3448 ultrawide 3440 x 1440 monitor.
8. Reused a G2420HD 1920 x 1080 monitor as a second monitor.
7. Reused a 120GB SSD for design files.
8. Reused a Seagate 2TB HDD for general file storage.
9. Reused the trusty Coolermaster case from 2004 (for the third time). Very good EMC shielding.
10. Reused the DVD/CDROM drive.
11. Reused the Windows 10 license.
12. Reused a power supply off another old PC (after modifying the connectors).

The Ryzen is an excellent CPU. Relatively low power too. AMD used to be lousy with power consumption, but they have improved greatly. I was cautious about moving from Intel, but I am glad I did.

The Gigabyte motherboard is a fair price for good performance and features. The 32GB DDR4 is a must for complex Altium designs and a host of other concurrent applications running.

Now the graphics card was selected because it HAS NO FAN and provided more than the performance I need. Most graphics cards cheap out on their fans, using phosphor bronze bearings which eventually fail by buzzing, rattling or seizing. And you can often not get replacement fans.

The keyboard is brilliant. Almost impossible to get. Sold out in Australia. In the USA there is limited stock and a relative wanted one so he had to import it from the USA at a higher cost. The COVID-19 has halted supply from Aizo in the PRC. I love this big-character back-lit keyboard. Tactile, comfortable, well designed, and easy to read. A good keyboard is like a bed. False economy if you get a lousy one, because you spend much of your life using it. This keyboard cost me $40 USD delivered.

For an SSD, I only trust Intel. The widescreen monitor is terrific.

Total upgrade cost $1100 AUD which is around $700 USD at the time. Enjoyed building it up, getting all the drivers working, reinstalling all my applications, and the endless Windows updates upon installation. Spent the time with cable ties making a neat installation inside the machine.

The machine works a treat. The Altium DRC on a complex PCBA I was working on used to take 50 seconds. It now takes about 10 seconds. That is a phenomenal improvement.

[bd139]

Just a point: if you want silent graphics cards which have a bit of grunt there are plenty which have idle fan speeds at 0 rpm. I've got a fairly hefty Geforce 1660 and it sits there at 0rpm most of the day. If I want some grunt it's barely audible as well.

Also 8 core Ryzen 7 3700X (65W) actually runs cooler and faster than the Ryzen 5 2600X (105W).