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voltage · ‎10-26-2015

Hi guys,

so apperently, it was not a good idea to upgrade my pc with 3 hours of sleep..
I forgot to use rubberwashers on the front while mounting the backplate of my H110i GTX cooler.
I actually didn't even think about that there could be traces right under the screw mount hole, my old motherboards had no such thing..

After the first screw, i stopped immediately after seeing the traces under it, but it was too late and it seems like i cut one.
I build it anyways and everything seems to work fine. I even overclocked and everything seems perfectly stable...

It looks like it goes to the RAM-Slot, i tested all slots and all seems to work without problems.

Any idea where this goes to and what i might have destroyed?

My motherboard: Maximus VIII Ranger

See the pictures below:

cekim · ‎10-26-2015

The trace is metal underneath the coating you scraped off, so you may not have made it through the metal. In which case put some electrical tape, a rubber washer or something to keep future shorts from occurring and enjoy.

Korth · ‎10-27-2015

It appears that you've only scratched off some of the solder mask. It's just a surface coating which has no electrical function. You can safely touch it up with a black Sharpie marker (in fact, the ink in these markers is a fine resist and many people use them when fabbing or reworking PCBs).

Not sure exactly what that trace does. It appears to be part of a group which feeds into the processor socket.

I'm guessing your motherboard was not really intended to be installed or serviced by end-users - if it were, it would likely have larger copper pads around all the screw holes which either lead to chassis ground or are entirely unconnected. Asus is not often so cheap and sloppy. Your rubber spacers or smaller screw heads would prevent further damage.

"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

voltage · ‎10-27-2015

Thanks, i allready used thick and soft rubber washers to prevent any shorts from the damage.

What do you mean by this motherboard is probably not made to be serviced/installed by endusers, I thought the Asus ROG Maximus series are one of the most used motherboards among overclockers and gamers? 🙂 I think its normal, but they could have let a little more space around the screw holes or at least give a proper warning to use rubber washers, or just include some rubber washers in the first place 😄

Anyways, i tested everything and have not found any problems yet. I just hope that i won't break my board with a future BIOS update just to have ASUS refuse a repair/change because i damaged a trace..

Korth · ‎10-27-2015

Agreed, Maximus mobos are definitely enthusiast grade stuff which fully embrace the hardware-empowered "ROG spirit". And I know (perhaps better than most) just how very precious mobo real-estate around pin-dense parts (like an Intel IC socket) can be. I just sort of expected more, lol, something more like this. It just seems like an easily avoided problem which many users will not always easily avoid, lol. I've had to service plenty of mainboards which were user-damaged like yours (though damaged severely enough to become inoperable, since lazy technicians really like their powerdriver tools), but not for some years now, I'd thought this sort of poor PCB design was a thing of the past.

I guess I can't really fault Asus if they provided (and you didn't use) their own proper-sized screws and/or protective spacers. Perhaps the fault lies elsewhere if, for example, your motherboard-mounting screws came with your chassis or were a slightly nonstandard variety purchased from some other source. On the plus side, I see plenty of cool black screws and ROG-reddish rubber bits which would would look quite snazzy with your mobo.

"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

voltage · ‎10-27-2015

Korth wrote:
Agreed, Maximus mobos are definitely enthusiast grade stuff which fully embrace the hardware-empowered "ROG spirit". And I know (perhaps better than most) just how very precious mobo real-estate around pin-dense parts (like an Intel IC socket) can be. I just sort of expected more, lol, something more like this. It just seems like an easily avoided problem which many users will not always easily avoid, lol. I've had to service plenty of mainboards which were user-damaged like yours (though damaged severely enough to become inoperable, since lazy technicians really like their powerdriver tools), but not for some years now, I'd thought this sort of poor PCB design was a thing of the past.

I guess I can't really fault Asus if they provided (and you didn't use) their own proper-sized screws and/or protective spacers. Perhaps the fault lies elsewhere if, for example, your motherboard-mounting screws came with your chassis or were a slightly nonstandard variety purchased from some other source. On the plus side, I see plenty of cool black screws and ROG-reddish rubber bits which would would look quite snazzy with your mobo.

Well that was not the motherboard mounting hole but the cpu backplate mounting hole. The screws are of course custom made for the cooler. As i said there were no rubber washers or spacers included for the motherboard or the cooler 🙂
The fault was mine for not being careful, ASUS and Corsair for not including any rubber washers or at least providing instructions to use rubber washers.

Daytrader · ‎10-29-2015

Yeh its stupid of asus to have all thouse tracks so close to mounting holes, if anyone is buying one of there rog boards, there going to be using a big cooler that needs big fittings, example my nh dh-14 only comes with big plastic spacers, and they cut right into my board tracks, as you have to tigten the screws for cooler until you come to a stop, and if you dont, you dont get good contact with the chip, and if you use rubber watchers, that keeps the cooler plate from tigten right to the chip, not sure why these coolers dont come with rubber spacers instead of hard plastic spacers.

cekim · ‎10-29-2015

Daytrader wrote:
Yeh its stupid of asus to have all thouse tracks so close to mounting holes, if anyone is buying one of there rog boards, there going to be using a big cooler that needs big fittings, example my nh dh-14 only comes with big plastic spacers, and they cut right into my board tracks, as you have to tigten the screws for cooler until you come to a stop, and if you dont, you dont get good contact with the chip, and if you use rubber watchers, that keeps the cooler plate from tigten right to the chip, not sure why these coolers dont come with rubber spacers instead of hard plastic spacers.

There are a ludicrous number of wires to be routed in very little space with all manner of constraints to reach these speeds. Witnessing how hard it was to route signals at a few hundred MHz in the 90's I am continually impressed at how consumer/bulk PCBs can now route multi-GHz signals in these quantities with such reliability.

Could they have left a little more room? Don't know for sure... I will say that the corsair CPU water block seems to get around this issue by intentionally NOT having the stand-offs snug to the PCB. They hit the back plate's threaded insert long before they hit the PCB. So things rattle around until you clamp the water block on at which point the base of the standoff is now well above the PCB.

That eliminates the need for the washers or anything more than plastic as there is no pressure on them.

voltage · ‎10-29-2015

cekim wrote:
There are a ludicrous number of wires to be routed in very little space with all manner of constraints to reach these speeds. Witnessing how hard it was to route signals at a few hundred MHz in the 90's I am continually impressed at how consumer/bulk PCBs can now route multi-GHz signals in these quantities with such reliability.

Could they have left a little more room? Don't know for sure... I will say that the corsair CPU water block seems to get around this issue by intentionally NOT having the stand-offs snug to the PCB. They hit the back plate's threaded insert long before they hit the PCB. So things rattle around until you clamp the water block on at which point the base of the standoff is now well above the PCB.

That eliminates the need for the washers or anything more than plastic as there is no pressure on them.

Well that is true, but many people report that the cooler doesn't fully sit on the cpu that way and the temperatures are rather bad for a watercooler. Many suggest a workaround using rubber spacers to get a solid and fixed connection between cpu and cpu cooler.

I can also confirm this. It makes a difference of about 10c in full load. Meaning that fixing the loose backplate problem which some claim is not a problem but is "intended", seems to affect the temperatur a lot.

It was allready a problem with old H100i cooler from corsair, it made a huge difference after using rubber spacers, but i didn't had to use rubber spacers in the front and backside on my old mainboard as the space between the traces were big enough.

Korth · ‎10-29-2015

Multi-layer PCBs increase trace count per inch. The traces visible on the surface layers tend to use thicker copper tend to carry main power/ground lines. PCs actually carry signals across the board which range up to GHz frequencies, so some considerations from microwave engineering (like the UHF ham radio guys do) is needed along some paths and places some out-of-trace qualities (like inductive coupling and component-level capacitances and electrical wavelengths) into the circuit, again this is easier to work out with a multi-layer PCB. Even Gigabyte's much-vaunted 2oz copper weight can only go so far before a complex circuit involves unwieldy tradeoffs.

Though I've never actually cracked a Maximus mobo in half to count the inner layers, lol.

"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

Trace damaged but everything working, what did i destroy?