This Asus Motherboard Is Burning Up Because of a Dumb Manufacturing Flaw

Building a motherboard, it seems, requires the identical precision as defusing a bomb—one seemingly small, silly mistake and the complete factor goes up in smoke.

Just ask the house owners of the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero who discovered their high-end desktop part charred after regular use.

Widespread stories throughout numerous social media platforms emerged over the previous few weeks, describing how the Asus motherboard would throw up a BIOS code of 53, indicating a reminiscence initialization failure. Some customers smelled smoke coming from their boards and investigated to discover a burn mark within the nook, just below the QLED. In most instances, the customers heard a clanking or popping earlier than the motherboard failed.

“…I get stuck on boot with QCODE 53 and QLED Orange (first time) and noticed a penny sized burn mark under the bottom right of the QLED, burnt to a crisp almost (top side, lot of soot) and melting the QCODE box a little,” somebody wrote on Asus’s ROG forums.

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“Then late at night I am merely surfing the web and all of a sudden it hard shuts off again, and this time when I look over there I see a component on the motherboard literally on fire. I quickly switch the psu off and unplug it from the wall,” Reddit consumer TheMaxXHD, who had two boards fail on them, wrote.

The desktop lovers group spent just a few weeks determining what was occurring with these new motherboards earlier than Asus chimed in, admitting to Tom’s Hardware that the boards are faulty as a result of a single capacitor was put in backward. Here is what the corporate needed to say:

“In our ongoing investigation, we have preliminarily identified a potential reversed memory capacitor issue in the production process from one of the production lines that may cause debug error code 53, no post, or motherboard components damage. The issue potentially affects units manufactured in 2021 with the part number 90MB18E0-MVAAY0 and serial number starting with MA, MB, or MC.”

If you personal Asus’ Z690 Hero motherboard, take a look at the product packaging and ensure your half isn’t affected by the manufacturing error. If it’s, cease utilizing it instantly and await Asus to roll out its promised substitute program. Asus is outwardly working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPS) to label the substitute program as an official recall; as soon as it goes by means of, the fiery motherboards could be shipped off.

Even in case your board doesn’t match these serial numbers, you need to proceed with warning as Asus says it’s persevering with its investigation to see which boards are affected. This might sound foolish, however when you don’t know your motherboard’s batch quantity, test to see if the “150″ printed on the capacitor is facing the correct direction or if it is upside down. If it’s the latter, contact Asus’s support team and ask for a replacement.

Asus’s statement only confirms what popular YouTuber Buildzoid had already predicted. He identified what was wrong with the motherboard, explaining that the polarity stripe on the backward polarized capacitor was itself installed backward, causing nearby MOSFETs (transistors) to fry. Sure enough, every affected board shares the same issue where two MOSFETs tasked with sending 5V of power to other parts of the motherboard were burned up by the faulty memory capacitor.

Asus appears to be taking the correct steps to get these out of shoppers’ properties, however such a probably harmful blunder calls into query the corporate’s high quality management. We can solely hope the corporate takes the steps essential to reassure its huge buyer base that its merchandise are protected to make use of. In the meantime, you need to on the very least avoid the Maximus Z690 Hero.