So, I'm trying to help my little brother build a gaming PC for his 18th birthday. He has a bit of money saved up, but I want to help him save as much money as possible and I've donated a few parts of mine already. There's one part I'm hesitant in donating though and it's this MSI 970 Gaming motherboard. I ran this motherboard with an overclocked nuclear reactor (FX-6300) in it for almost a year.
I guess this mother board wasn't built to handle overclocking as it looks like thermal paste from the vrm cooler has leaked out from underneath it and permeated to the other side of the mother board. The over clock was still stable during my use and the temperatures were normal. Obviously I can't say the same for the vrm. But, I'm just wondering if this motherboard might be able to handle the FX 6300 for a while again at stock clock.
Is it worth giving him this motherboard or should we get a new one? I've included some pictures of the mess.
its probably nothing and motherboard will work fine
had this "stuff" on a lot of graphics cards and motherboards around certain part, its like oil or something from factory, you probably dont need to bother :)
this looks like water dmg. i would suggest washing it if you know for sure it has not been turned on since getting the water damage, however it would remove the "evidence" making it more difficult to find and repair the damage. the best method is first with distilled water then alcohol letting it sit submerged so the alcohol can repel the water then let it dry for 72 hours.
however if power was or has ran through it you likely have damage and blown fuses and such which need to be replaced and their is a chance some of connections have rusted away.
tl:dr if it is worth it to you get a repair shop o look at it first but if it's not worth repairing do it yourself. rossman repair on youtube has some good info.
I'm 100% sure that it's not water damage. This is how it looked after I took it out of my case. Never spilled anything on it and it was working just fine before I upgraded.
That is called oil bleed. It's silicone oil from the thermal padding that interfaces the heatsink with the fets.
The substance on the back is simply flux or solder mask that was not completely washed away during manufacturing. It's normal and all commercial PCBs will have it around large component clusters.
Neither are worth worrying about in this instance. Oil bleed is an issue for exceptionally high end video equipment since that oil can eventually leak into sensors, but that's about it.
