Accidentally scratched motherboard with screwdriver - am I in trouble ?

Forceflow

Forceflow

Forceflow

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1 Oct 2020
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Scratched my Tomahawk X570 a bit when I tried to undo a PCIe latch between my beefy Noctua cooler and my GPU with a long screwdriver.

PC powers on, works fine, ran through OCCT power test, AIDA64 burn test for 15 mins.

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Did I f up?
 
The middle of the bottom edge in the photo? It's hard to tell because the colours are weird, but it looks like it's just gone through the solder mask, not the copper underneath. It will be fine.
 
There's no sign of anything copper-coloured, so it might not have even gone all the way through the solder resist. I wouldn't worry about it.
 
It's fine. If you had shorted tracks or cut them you'd know about it.

Put it down as being a lucky break and move on.
 
I had the same problem when I changed my GPU over, the Noctua cooler gets in the way and it is very difficult to get enough pressure on the tab to release the GPU, I laid a strip of plastic over the circuitry to protect it from the screwdriver slipping.
I did try to push down the clip with a piece of wood but it wasn't strong enough.
The only other way is to remove the cooler first but then you have the possibility of it pulling out the CPU if it is stuck down well
 
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I'd get some conformal coating over the scratches. You'll probably need a UV light to set it though.

I've also used clear nail varnish in the past to protect repairs.
 
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Forceflow said:
Think that's really necessary? There's no exposed copper and I'd rather not touch it anymore.
Click to expand...
No, it's not necessary. Even if there was exposed copper it wouldn't be necessary, since the main purpose of conformal coating is to prevent corrosion, which isn't a problem with things used indoors in the dry.
 
I would suggest you stop playing about inside computers and use it before you really kill it.
Seriously the computer is running fine but your scared i mean wtf.
I wonder how long before another scratched part is reported.
 
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