# How Do Motherboard Burn?



## Crimsonnaire

Hello.

Can someone please explain to me how motherboards that come with popular brand desktops (Gateway, Dell, eMachines) typically burn out? Is it strictly attributed to insufficient airflow, or does surpassing the RAM limit also make a difference? (By "surpassing RAM," I mean using up all the available MB and forcing the computer to compensate and run slower.)

Also, do some motherboard fans respond to temperature with a thermostat? How do you find out if your fans are providing enough cooling?

Thank you for your help.


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## cohen

Overclocking sometimes does it.

Shorting something out, over working the motherboard.

In the bios you can change the fan to speed up when it get's to a certain temperature.


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## TrainTrackHack

Usually, Big-Brand PCs come with cheapass motherboards, which means cheapass components - crappy, low-quality cheap-manufacture components/whatnot - they simply are more prone to failure through wear caused by electricity running through them, they are made to be cheap and affordable, not reliable. This isn't made any better by the fact that prebuilt PCs also have cheapass low-end PSUs with unstable currents and crappy voltage regulators & whatnot, those sometimes simply break poor-quality components' necks just like that. This is not only the case with prebuilt PCs, though, if you have an El Cheapo no-brand PSU and the cheapest motherboard that the local shop had in a case with sub-par airflow , it's just as prone to failure as a prebuilt PC.


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## Crimsonnaire

cohen said:


> Overclocking sometimes does it.
> 
> Shorting something out, over working the motherboard.



By overclocking, do you mean using the full RAM capacity? Or is that the over working?

Could electrical disturbances from thunderstorms still damage motherboards even when hooked up to a surge-protector?

Hackapelite, which name brand motherboard lasts longest?


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## TrainTrackHack

> Could electrical disturbances from thunderstorms still damage motherboards even when hooked up to a surge-protector?


I assume that it would be possible, though unlikely - if a thunderstorm takes out your MoBo, chances are it's taken out several other components as well.


> Hackapelite, which name brand motherboard lasts longest?


Generally, any quality-brand motherboards like EVGA, Gigabyte, ASUS will be good. For more budget-minded, ASrock and MSI are decent brands. I'm not good when it comes to picking a mobo, so if you have any specific needs, just post here and some of our experts will show up and steer you in the right direction.


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## Vizy

Crimsonnaire said:


> By overclocking, do you mean using the full RAM capacity? Or is that the over working?



Overclocking is when u manually set specific components to run at a higher clock (speed) then stock (when you bought it). As for using up all your ram capacity at one time, some programs would just start to crash, windows might bsod, but i doubt there are any hardware effects.


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## Crimsonnaire

Could rapid power outages that cut and restores power in a split second affect the motherboard's ability to turn on/off or go into standby mode in the long run? By rapid power outage, I mean like pulling the adapter off and reinserting it real quick without letting the computer to turn off completely before turn it on again.


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## jdbennet

yes

i read that it puts the same strain as 10 hours idle, to do 1 cold boot.


generally faults are:

overclocking
overheating
shorting
blown caps
surge


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## Crimsonnaire

Idling wears out the motherboard too? I remember seeing desktops in school being left on for weeks at a time. A friend of mine did this with his old '98 Pentium 3 Gateway, and it's still working the last time I checked.

What's the best surge protector available now? I'm currently using SurgeMaster III, which came with the desktop I bought in 2001.


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