What did I damage on my X570?

In the process of switching my X570 mobo in my desktop with my B550 mobo in my NAS.

While trying to unhook the PCIE slot, I damaged a part of the board with a screwdriver.

If anybody has any idea about what I damaged/ what should I do (leave it/solder it together/ try to find someone to repair it) I would very much appreciate the information :v:

Also I was unable to retrieve the part I seemed to have knocked off…

The board: ROG Strix X570-F Gaming | Motherboards | ROG Global

I mean did you boot it? Whats not working? Should be an easy fix for board repair, but not for beginners.

Gonna try booting it soon.

I would guess some part of the mobo would not work or throw errors. You may or may no be using that part, but you can deff get that fixed if there are any local board repair places.Shipping may or may not be worth it as you might be able to get another board for not much more. (Paying round trip shipping + repair vs just another used board)

Currently just getting a red CPU light when trying to boot. No display output.

Looks like it comes from a leg of that IC near it to somwehere through the board. Not sure if the device near the damaged trace is a resistor, capacitor, or fuse but either way the trace is clearly severed and on top of that now gouged into either a ground trace or voltage supply trace. A repair shop that does PCB work may be able to fix it but you may be screwed given the bridging between the signal trace and thicker trace. Repairing a severed trace is relatively easy usually as you just bridge over the damaged area with conductive material, but since the signal now bleeds into a ground or higher voltage area Im not sure how that would be stopped. And if that is a voltage supply then the voltage may have killed the components the damaged trace connects to already anyway.

I think the trace you bridged into with the damage is either a ground or voltage supply trace because it is thicker. Usually ground is thicker like that but sometimes so is voltage supply, and the SOIC-8 part the larger trace connects to is often a V+ pin on parts in that form factor. Even if that trace is only a 3.3v supply, connecting that voltage level to what is probably a 1v or less signal line into whatever part can definitely kill it. If the thicker trace is just a ground though, whatever part the signal trace connects to may be non-functional now but may not be damaged as the signal may simply be draining to ground instead of getting through, and fixing the damage would make the signal work again.

Not sure that that IC controls on the board there that the damaged trace and component goes to, and the fan shroud is covering up the case labeling so impossible to tell unless you remove the fan and take a larger high res picture. Given that you tried booting and it wont do it Id say it doesnt really matter what the IC controls as the damaged area is obviously important. Given the number of components around it that feed into and out of the IC I would guess it is a controller or redriver of some sort.

I also believe it should be one of these 3… debating on if I should try shorting the area for a boot test.
Repair shops and such here in Slovenia unfortunately don’t really do this sort of stuff (just the more typical like screen replacement & ribon cables & such), it’s just not a big enough of a market as there’s 2.4 Mil people in the whole country.

Don’t boot it. Go to phone store and let them put a jumper wire on it or do it yourself
that chip looks like some kind of amp

@mutation666 @EniGmA1987 @Mongoosh Thank you all for your replies!

In the end I decided to try jumping the missing resistor/capacitor/fuse on the board as there unfortunately isn’t really any local repair of this type available.
I’d either have to drive for 1-2h or send the board in & in the end the repair wouldn’t even be certain considering I already tried booting the board (possibly causing more damage & who knows what part was missing for sure, I don’t imagine Asus would have their schematics public…)

First I tried jumping the spot with a tiny wire & then some unmelted solder, but that didn’t work (probably because the contact was just not good enough for the low voltage).

So I decided to take out my old dirty 5€ Aliexpress soldering iron… and then just buy a new board when that wouldn’t work.
Well… I’m not gonna say I fixed it, but I am now able to boot into BIOS, the DRAM, CPU mobo lights did flash for a while before settling, but that could’ve just been the first boot or whatever.

For now it actually works & I will attempt to contact Asus to possibly find out what was in that spot to see if long-term this could be an issue or … something.

That’s it, hope who every reads this has a nice day :v:

4 Likes

If it works it works, Where you planing on using that second pci expres slot ?

Isn’t that an epyc feeling, fixing your own board like that

I’m planning on pretty much using everything yes & for a long time xD
I wanted to replace my B550 with this board in my NAS so I’d get 2 extra SATA ports & some nice to have’s… So well… I’ll see how it goes :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

A good stress test on the system would be suggestion, if you are planing for 24/7 use.
i think first cpu only, then put a graphic card in that top slot. and get that card to full power. see what is happening and if its still stable. It was around the area of the top slot i think

Absolutely; should’ve seen me 2 weeks ago after I tore apart my car to get to the AC electric motor that stopped working… upon cleaning it I messed up one of the springs that make contact with the motor (so no power without it); I ended up breaking open a hand soap bottle & taking the spring out of that, modifying it & putting it into the electric motor… Everything worked, still works & the AC actually works a lot better than when I got the car 4 years ago (16 year old car)

1 Like

Fixing stuff feels good. and those evil company’s are trying to make that imposible

1 Like

Yes, I’d guess that it either affects the main GPU slot or the main M.2 slot from looking at it closely. Both of witch I should/will test… and preferably with some older equipment :slight_smile:

1 Like

traces look to go from the main gpu slot so then i guess its the m2. Put your cheapsest m2 in there to test

Yup, I have just the one. A Sabrent rocket that almost lost my data (it was not refreshing it’s NAND like SSD’s are supposed to) and it apparently prevents computers from going into deeper C states to save power. I have an Intel Optane M10 I got for 5€ off of AliExpress (which would be the smart thing to do) but I dislike that Sabrent drive xD

Then go with the drive you dislike.

We forgot an important step. do u have a volt meter ?

Yeah, I have a multimeter. Didn’t think about using that since I didn’t know what the voltage was in the first place. Also with how small the pads are my prongs might be too big (if that’s why you’re asking anyways).

Since “fixing :crossed_fingers:” the board I was able to reinstall TrueNAS. Everything works just as it should. I kind of stress tested the 2 slots with 2 NVME’s in mirror running scrub tasks.
I was also having RAM issues & I’d get the red CPU issue light, so I was about to accept that the board finally died or smtn; but it was due to me not taking out the CMOS battery for long enough (for a proper BIOS reset when it wouldn’t boot), so the board was running too aggressive of a profile for my ECC memory… which resulted as a red CPU warning light & not the orange DRAM light as I’d expect. Luckily I threw my “gaming” memory in there for a try.

I also wrote a support ticket to Asus, asking if I could get the info on what that part was. But for right now, everything’s been 100%.

I think there’s a relatively low chance this could damage anything, but then again, I also don’t know what I’m talking about :sweat_smile: