880GM not booting, southbridge getting very hot

[yello]

Hi, hope I can get some advise. My 880GM with WinXP doesn't boot anymore. Before it booted sometimes. Often it took a fe attempts, sometimes the pc froze after a few minutes. When it doesn't boot I get a black screen. Southbridge is getting very hot too.

I swapped the power supply with another pc and also swapped ram - no change.

Any idea what could be the issue?

[therube]

Re: 880GM not booting, southbridge getting very hot

As a start you could try stripping it down to bare minimum; 1 stick of RAM, KB, mouse & video & see if that gets you anywhere.

> Southbridge is getting very hot

How do you know?

[yello]

Re: 880GM not booting, southbridge getting very hot

As a start you could try stripping it down to bare minimum; 1 stick of RAM, KB, mouse & video & see if that gets you anywhere.> Southbridge is getting very hotHow do you know?

Well, it was REALLY hot, untouchable. Today the board was totally dead. Seams the PS died too. Will get a new PS and then think about the next step.

[yello]

Re: 880GM not booting, southbridge getting very hot

The mb seems really dead now. No sound at all with a new power supply. It doesn't bring the ps into wake state (no shorting pin 15 & 16). Nothing gets warm anymore.

Any ideas what to check next?

[Shiari]

Re: 880GM not booting, southbridge getting very hot

From your initial post it seems like you've been having overheating problems. I don't know if that was overclocked or not, but something SB related must have been faulty and/or not getting enough cooling. If you're under warranty, RMA it. If you're not under warranty, I guess it's time to shop for a new board.

[yello]

Re: 880GM not booting, southbridge getting very hot

Nope, I never OC that MB. Have to add that maybe there was a RAM problem. I noticed some strange behavior that did change with swapping RAM. I guess that some RAM behavior may effect the southbridge too.

In the meantime I got some fresh RAM but the board now stays dead.

Some further testing:

The PS doesn't start. It just sends out the minimum supply. I noticed that even now the APW7120 (a buck PWM controller) get's really hot. I checked VCC on pin5 and it's just 1V. But it needs 5-12V IN. The nearby 72T02GH seems OK, but one of the two nearby 86T02GH has 0 Ohm between D + S.

Without circuit diagram it's not easy to go from here. Could be that one of the 86T02GH is defect, or one of the nearby SMD caps cracked. A cap crack is in most cases invisible and often they do short.