this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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The pattern says liquid but the colors say heat damage. Both?
Hard to say. She's been in 24/7 service since 2017. Never had stability issues and I've tested it with Prime95 plenty of times upon upgrades. Last week I ran a Llama model and the computer froze hard. Even holding the power button wouldn't turn it off. Did the PSU power flip, came back up. Prime95 stable. Llama -> rip. Perhaps it's been cooked for a while and only trips by this workload. She's an old board, a Gigabyte with B350 running a 5950X (for a couple of years), so it's not super surprising that the power section has been a bit overused. 😅 Replacing with an X570 as we speak.
I think I found the source of the liquid @[email protected]. The thermal pad under the VRM heatsink has begun to liquefy into oily substance. This substance appears to have gone to the underside of the board through the vias around the VRM and discolored itself.
Some rubbing with isopropyl alcohol and it's almost gone:
Perhaps there's still life left in this board if used with an older chip.
Discovered exactly the same thing when I replaced my dead Gigabyte Z370 recently! Also took me a while to figure it out.
Both those chipsets were released in 2017 so I guess it's no surprise they were made with the same thermal pads.