My dual AMD Tyan based computer, serious failure

[Lex]

Well guys, not a good morning. At 8:15 AM this morning my fire alarm went off. There was electrical smoke. Long story short, my Tyan Dual AMD is fried. I suspect under ventilation got it, but strange thing is, it has operated for weeks where it was. There is a backing plate in the back of my cabinet, that is in a bad location for this PC, and it may be preventing adequite air draw.
I came in here, and of course, the first call was to get the piercing fire alarm turned off, very high pitch, was hurting my ears. I began looking around the room, and noticed my PC powered down. I left it on last night.

I pulled the cover off, and powered it on, just to see what it did, and there was smoke coming off what I think was the Ge-Force 3 card. The card has sort of a bad smell to it now. I installed an 8 bit video card I had, and then powered it on. No smoke, but it never did engage. No cmos screen, nothing. Holding the power button down will not turn it off. I suspect either the Mobo, or the chips are fried, I don't know.

I do know one thing, I am sick about this, very sick. I got my reliable 800 mghz machine up in it's place. Will try to decide what to do next. I may box the whole thing up and send it back to AdvancedDesignKY.com. Let them figure it out, and fix it.

Then again, I may pull the chips and evaluate them. Will it show if they are fried? or will they just look normal? All fans are engaged, and appear to be working properly, just won't boot. I don't know what to do.

Can you guys make some recommendations here? could it be that the Mobo fried at the video AGP? Maybe my Ge-force 3 isn't fried? I don't knwo what to do, truly.

Lex

[Bing Fung]

Lex, WTF is up with that? That sounds very serious indeed. Maybe try installing the GF3 in another PC to see if it's toast or not. :E :E However if it is indeed fried, you may not want to do that untill you determine if the problem is Mobo related or not. The fried Video card may just fry another Mobo.

Try clearing the cmos of the mobo with the old video card installed. If it doesn't go from there look through the manual to see if there is a certain sequence you may need to invoke to boot from an error condition.

I am guessing that if there was smoke, some chips should be discolored from the heat. Look for tell tale signs of burnt off print on the chips.

Does it look just like the Video card at this point?

What makes you think the Tyan is fried as well?

Sorry to hear... That is a major drag!




Bing

[Lex]

Problem solved. Board shorted out around a screw hole where the Mobo is attached to the case base, back side under PCI cards. I HOPE, none of my PCI cards got fried. I didn't think to look exactly which card it fell under when I removed the cards. In fact, I didnt' even see it until I removed all the PCI cards. Now I did note which slot they were in on paper, so I could probably figure it out that way.

Board is removed with CPUs and fans in tact, packed and ready to ship. AdvancedDesign already said would take care of me.

Actually, I think they left the spacer screw loose, which could have contributed to the short, or it could have been the screw went through the board material to copper, I don't know.

Off to UPS,
Lex

[SiliGoose]

Lex,

Man that hurts! Sounds like you got there just in time -assuming the PCI cards and CPU's are still OK. I hate to think what might had happened if you we not at home!

Let us know when you get it back. I want to see some benchmark scores from that beast.




-Sili

[Lex]

Actually, the machine shut down automatically sometime after the malfunction. Thank God! Had it not, it could have been a fire, just guessing. I should have taken a picture of it before I sent it off, but I didn't think to.

I asked about upgrading to the new Asus Mobo for dual AMD CPUs. I don't know as yet if they will let me, but we shall see. I think the Tyan is a good board, but the Asus wasn't available when I got the Tyan, so I may just spring for it. I asked about a memory upgade too, so maybe he will want the extra bucks.

lex

[Trevor Schell]

Glad they are going to take care of you Lex.

I wonder what would cause such a short.
Strange.




Trevor
My HomeTheater S.E.
Sonically Enhanced
C5

[Lex]

Bing, well, the spacing screw was backed out some when I removed the board. It could be, it shorted against the PCI card, I don't know. Or it could be insufficient board material around the screw hole, but the burn was very isolated around this one screw hole under the PCI card. Well, it's off to them for them to see, and replace. Including CPUs, if it took any of them out.

Bing, I have heard a little bad PR on the new Asus dual AMD board. how about you? Any ideas on it? I don't know if they will want me to change anyway, and maybe I shouldn't. The Tyan did seem very solid except for about burning my house down.

Lex

[SiliGoose]

Lex,

I think your fine with either. Their feature set is so similar that it's really which brand you prefer.

Do you do a lot of video editing or something? In all honesty, that's the only area where dual processors makes a significant speed difference. If you're just surfing the web and playing the occasional game you're better off with something more mundane.

Of course, I'm totally speaking out of absolute jealousy. I want that rig!!




-Sili