Hello everyone, so today i was cleaning my PC and removing the dust from fans and case, all normal. So i have two fans i used on a computer and i was using both fans with molex adapters (yeah i know) and i was thinking to use one of them as a back exhaust and another on the bottom. So i was trying to make work both fans with a molex adapter i had and suddenly a smoke came in... One of the fans died and i think a 3-pin fan adapter too but i saw something on the motherboard was burned
Sorry for the bad quality of my cellphone camera but i saw that, it was burned on a point and with some kind of copper looking line. I turned on my computer with no problems a couple of times but i'm worried if in a future my motherboard can fail and maybe take other components. Should i be worried? Honestly i wasnt thinking on making any upgrades hardware related but i hope it's not a big problem and i can keep with the motherboard a bit more time.
Yeah i know, right now my computers turns on normally i would give some time if anything goes well. Damn it, i didnt have the plan to buy anything for my PC (hardware related) but i think i might consider it Maybe get another 1155 motherboard or change the setup if anything happens.
Looks like you got a short. The copper thing on your board seems to be a trace that got hot and rose out of the board, and charred at one point. It's thicker than the other traces, so it's probably for power, not a signal. Try to trace it to a board component; my best guess is that your molex adapter/cables touched a header/pin on the board with an exposed conductive element (if it's too hard to do this by eye, take photos and draw a line using MS Paint or some such). Also possible that your molex adapter had a short within it, and your PSU's circuit breaker didn't kick in fast enough. Unlikely if you have a good PSU.
What model is your board/PSU?
If you don't get any more shorts, the board should be fine for a while (guessing). Running high current through an electrical component can fry it instantly (see: wire [almost]), otherwise it shortens the life but if it doesn't look fried it'll work for a while, if my understanding is correct. I'd stay away from that molex adapter; if you don't get any crashes/smoke it's probably okay.
@MrFigs Sure, my PSU is a Seasonic X Series 650W and board is Asus P8H77-M Pro
Thanks for your reply, so far my PC has turned on and worked normally so i hope i can keep using it and gaming until i make the upgrade. So far i removed the two fans and as a result of that one of the top fan headers stopped working.
I suppose that you might have burned out that particular fan header. One or more of those capacitors might be damaged as it looks to me. But if only the fan header doesnt work anymore, but the rest of the board works fine. Then you are probablly pretty lucky.
Its pretty hard to tell from a picture, it really needs some closer inspection. However if the board still works, and the system doesnt act funky. Then its pretty much fine. The only thing you should double check if you still have pwm fan control on your cpu fan.
I don't know PSUs so well, so maybe somebody else will know if that one has common problems. That said, I recently shorted out a 20-year-old, 250W, no-name PSU in a Pentium 1 machine and it didn't fry anything afaik. The fan header makes it pretty likely that the PSU isn't to blame.
By the way, is your dead fan header CHA_FAN2? It seems to be connected to the affected trace, so I'd bet on it. It's on the top of the board, next to the CPU fan.
A little update, so my PC has been working fine but today i was playing CSGO a little bit and i noticed that in some moments my screen went black for a little time and later came back normally.
Maybe get another 1155 motherboard or change the setup if anything happens.