A Scary Moment

floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
edited November 2004 in Hardware
I nearly killed my motherboard yesterday, and it's only about a month old.

There's a front panel bay comes with the DFI Lan Party NFII Ultra B, it houses various sockets & functions, so I thought it was about time to fit it.

All was going well until I realised the board connector for the front firewire socket was unaccessable. It was being covered by my graphics card Arctic Cooler, it's quite a big thing.

So I started taking out the graphics card. I wasn't sure how the graphics card retaining mechanism worked on the end of the AGP slot as I couldn't see it, that too was covered by the Arctic cooler.

So all I could do was feel blindly for it. I located what I thought was a lever and rocked it one way. Card still wouldn't budge. Rocked it the other way. This went on until I heard something snap and hit the motherboard. Oh ****.

When I eventually got the card out, I observed, with some horror, I'd managed to snap off an electrolytic capacitor. Ever seen a grown man cry?

After the shock and numbness had worn off, I started thinking what I was going to do about this. Can't RMA it cos of my clumsiness, but I didn't want to see eighty hard earnt pounds go up the spout.

I took a look at the value of the capacitor - 1000uF, 6.3V, then realised I had held on to a couple of junked boards, one an Abit KR7A-R. So I dug that out and unsoldered a capacitor of the same value. Same size as well, which was handy.

I then had to remove the DFI board completely, unsolder the two legs that were left in the board and soldered the replacement one in (carefully noting polarisation, of course).

The board is constructed without solder surfaces on the base for some components, the solder actually flows down the holes where the capacitor is mounted, which made things a little trickier.

Put everything back together and no probs :) You could say I expressed some small signs of relief. Jumping in the air, headbutting the ceiling and shouting 'woot' was just one of the ways I managed to convey my jubilation.

So now I have one little green Abit capacitor nestling amongst a load of DFI black ones, sort of stranger in a strange land ;)

So folks, be careful when you're meddling and tinkering, it could happen to you :eek:

And here's the little fella I managed to snap off:

Comments

  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited November 2004
    And here's the panel I fitted, I'm very pleased with this, I love it :)

    Headphone socket; Microphone socket; Firewire port; Motherboard LED Status Monitor and 2 USB ports.

    If I turn off my external speaker setup, I get great stereo sound from the headphone socket, for music, games and movies, using conventional headphones. I have a pair of expensive Philips phones and they do sound really rather good.

    I sprayed the front bay flap black, so it blends in with the black case.

    Now I know a lot of you guys have these front panels and may be thinking ‘so what’ but it’s new to me and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet ;)

    I also removed the front 3.5" panel that held the fan speed pot for my Gigabyte cooler, I didn't really like having a 'Gigabyte' logo on front of a DFI board based system. I moved the pot to the 3.5" panel that holds the switch for turning on my internal case lighting.

    I really must find a black knob to replace that silver one now.

    All in all, apart from that little scare, a good thing :)
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2004
    Nice case, what is it?? I notice you've got that big drive bay down there behind what I suppose are the front fans, and I see the hdd's mounted in the floppy bay where they won't get airflow over them, why's that? Just curious is all. Oh, BTW, nice gargoyle in your case too, is it in there to keep the gremlins at bay? ;D
    Nice to see you keep a calm head in what was a pretty crappy situation, glad to hear you got it all sorted out ok and that it's all fixed, kudos to a good repair job!! :thumbsup:
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited November 2004
    Thanks madmat :)

    It's a Lian Li PC61 case with Antec 480W.

    2 x 35Gb Raptors at the bottom in RAID 0 with 2 x Zalman quiet fans keeping them cool. 2 x WD 80Gb drives beneath the floppy drive, probably getting hot.

    Unfortunately as the Raptors block a lot of the through airflow I'm suffering a high case temp. It was 40C, about the same as the CPU @ 100%, but I removed the front fans grill mesh and cage and now it's at 34C, I was surprised it made that much difference. Means I have to clean it out more often now I suppose.

    Panaflo medium flo and Pabst medium flo at roof and rear, exhausting. I'm thinking of fitting another rear 80mm fan below the existing one.

    The Gargoyle is George, my daughter gave him to me as a birthday gift. He's gonna be treated to a coat of UV paint soon. Lighting consists of 1 x 12" purple neon and 1 x 12" UV strip light. And the blue led's on the Gigabyte cooler. I don't like things too flashy, that's quite enough for me :)
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    Holy hell. I didn't even see the gargoyle even though I focused extensively on the cards in the slots; shows you where my priorities lie.

    Hellooooo selective attention. My psych professor would be proud.
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited November 2004
    He do be a bit blurry in that above shot, here's a more detailed snap:
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    Thrax, it is people like you that keep psych profs employed
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2004
    I am a sucker for a Lian Li case, I like the build quality that goes into them, they are top notch. I've got a 6070 Silent case on the way although I plan on hopping the cooling system in the case up considerably because 3 low-flow fans aren't what I would consider up to the task.
    The lighting scheme looks good, the combination of the UV and purple CCFL's makes for a nice solid purple, very refreshing change from the other colours you commonly see (as in blue, perhaps), very cool indeed.
    I never noticed that there were in fact drives in the HDD cage, had you not said there were I'd have thought it was completely empty, something I often am accused of my head being ;)
    The Gigabyte cooler sure is a bright HSF, looks pretty flashy alright, all in all I'd say it's a pretty killer PC. If I might make a suggestion on the color you paint George, I think the clear red UV reactive pain would give him a nice devilish look. :thumbsup:
  • EMTEMT Seattle, WA Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    All I've got to say is, floppy... Good save!!
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited November 2004
    madmat wrote:
    If I might make a suggestion on the color you paint George, I think the clear red UV reactive pain would give him a nice devilish look. :thumbsup:

    I couldn't actually make my mind up about a colour, I'd almost plumped for green, but yeah, red would be good, I think. So at your suggestion, red it will be :)

    He's close to the four onboard status led's which are red, so it should match well.

    Looking forward to some pix of your new case hopefully.

    EMT - thanks :)
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2004
    I figure it could be a month at the rate it's taking for my case to get here...I've got interesting plans for it though...I'll be happy to post pics. :thumbsup:
Sign In or Register to comment.