Motherboard Failing?

[HB]Rugrat

[HB]Rugrat

[HB]Rugrat

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29 Jan 2003
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1,190
A couple of weeks ago, the front panel USB-C header on my motherboard (an Asus ROG Strix z690-a) died - no warning, just one day it worked, the next day it didn't. Yesterday the USB 3 ports (sorry, 3.2 gen 1 or whatever we're supposed to call them these days) at the rear all stopped working as well. I can manage without them but is this a sign of impending doom for the motherboard? It's under a custom water loop so it's going to be a massive pain to replace it. On the one hand I'd like to get ahead of the problem and replace it while I'm not in the middle of doing some paid work, but then again I'm not exactly flush at the moment so don't want to spend unnecessarily if it's just a limited issue. I've done the usual stuff of poking around for rogue cabling, uninstalled windows drivers, tried a different OS etc. to no avail.

In 30 years of PC building / tinkering I've never actually had a motherboard fail (though I've broken plenty :cool:) so I'm not entirely sure how to proceed - grateful for thoughts / opinions!
 
[HB]Rugrat said:
A couple of weeks ago, the front panel USB-C header on my motherboard (an Asus ROG Strix z690-a) died - no warning, just one day it worked, the next day it didn't. Yesterday the USB 3 ports (sorry, 3.2 gen 1 or whatever we're supposed to call them these days) at the rear all stopped working as well. I can manage without them but is this a sign of impending doom for the motherboard? It's under a custom water loop so it's going to be a massive pain to replace it. On the one hand I'd like to get ahead of the problem and replace it while I'm not in the middle of doing some paid work, but then again I'm not exactly flush at the moment so don't want to spend unnecessarily if it's just a limited issue. I've done the usual stuff of poking around for rogue cabling, uninstalled windows drivers, tried a different OS etc. to no avail.

In 30 years of PC building / tinkering I've never actually had a motherboard fail (though I've broken plenty :cool:) so I'm not entirely sure how to proceed - grateful for thoughts / opinions!
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I'd be checking you don't have a minor leak... tiny amount of water can start to cause minor parts to fail depending where in the board the impact is. Two seperate USB system failures may suggest a common point of failure.
 
I'd suspect a malfunctioning USB device here, are you plugging the same one into the different ports that are now dead?
 
mickyflinn said:
Are the ports showing up in device manager ?

Check usb power settings.
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Yes they are showing up in device manager but are totally unresponsive to anything plugged in - I tried a usb port tester and there's power going through them but nothing else. I disabled the usb power saving option and made sure they were enabled in the bios but still no joy.
decto said:
I'd be checking you don't have a minor leak... tiny amount of water can start to cause minor parts to fail depending where in the board the impact is. Two seperate USB system failures may suggest a common point of failure.
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Yeah I thought the same but I can't see any signs of a leak. My coolant has a UV additive in it so I've looked with a black light for traces of liquid where it shouldn't be.
 
[HB]Rugrat said:
Yes they are showing up in device manager but are totally unresponsive to anything plugged in - I tried a usb port tester and there's power going through them but nothing else. I disabled the usb power saving option and made sure they were enabled in the bios but still no joy.
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Any warranty left ?
 
Tetras said:
I'd suspect a malfunctioning USB device here, are you plugging the same one into the different ports that are now dead?
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I tried a range of devices (memory stick, keyboard, mouse, video capture device etc) in the now-dead ports and nothing worked - every device worked fine in the remaining live ports though.
 
[HB]Rugrat said:
I tried a range of devices (memory stick, keyboard, mouse, video capture device etc) in the now-dead ports and nothing worked - every device worked fine in the remaining live ports though.
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To be clear, I meant, I suspect the device of killing the port.
 
[HB]Rugrat said:
Oh sorry I see what you mean - could be I guess but whichever device it might have been is currently working happily in the remaining ports (for now, gulp)
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It's not a likely issue, but if I were to have a suspect, it'd be the one with the highest power draw.
 
Funnily enough, I am having the exact same problem with my 790 extreme (posted in this forum)

Any luck solving the issue?
 
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Berno said:
Funnily enough, I am having the exact same problem with my 790 extreme (posted in this forum)

Any luck solving the issue?
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Yes, thankfully - I changed power supplies. I don't know if the 850w PSU I had been using was faulty or just couldn't supply enough power* but I saw an offer on a corsair 1500w PSU, took the plunge and it's been fine since.

*: aside from the 12900k, 3080, water pump and 7 fans I have an absolute boatload of RGB to feed.
 
[HB]Rugrat said:
Yes, thankfully - I changed power supplies. I don't know if the 850w PSU I had been using was faulty or just couldn't supply enough power* but I saw an offer on a corsair 1500w PSU, took the plunge and it's been fine since.

*: aside from the 12900k, 3080, water pump and 7 fans I have an absolute boatload of RGB to feed.
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How old was the previous PSU that was powering the machine?
 
Grumbledook said:
How old was the previous PSU that was powering the machine?
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It's about 2.5 years old - it's a Coolermaster v850 gold v2. I didn't have a custom loop when I bought it (or even half the amount of RGB) so I think I might have just overtaxed it. To back that up, I've subsequently tested it with a second system and it's behaving nicely.
 
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