Can Linux kill a motherboard?

[Guest]

Just send it back if you still habe warranty.

Good luck with that. If you have warranty with the place you bought it from, deal with them first. And even if it's out of warranty from the place of purchase, maybe bother them a bit about it. Last thing I'd recommend is dealing with ASRock for an RMA...

I doubt it.

I did have a P4 laptop (Dell Inspiron 9100). The people at Dell put a desktop Prescott in that thing. One day, the fans didn't spin up when I applied load, and... poof. No fire, just something died. I suppose it's possible if something mismanages your fans and one of those thermal safety type mechanisms aren't triggered.

Unrelated, but I killed a power supply for my desktop recently. Was running a FX-8350 and a Radeon HD 7850 (both slightly overclocked) on some cheap hec PSU. Stressing either the CPU or the GPU was fine for about 5 minutes (didn't try longer). Tried doing both at the same time, and the computer shut right off. The PSU died, without noise or anything.

[rice_nine]

To be fair, it has happened, though this exact thing should not be a problem at all, either for your machine or for anyone recently. Knowing how some of those old Thinkpads were just weird, it was no big surprise... the 600E had the screwiest firmware I've ever seen-- 3 or 4 color 80's looking GUI, lots of icons and it required the mouse (trackpoint) to be working so you could navigate the different screens and the cursor was a bird with animation that 'flapped' when you moved a pixel in any direction.

[elijahk33]

Good luck with that. If you have warranty with the place you bought it from, deal with them first. And even if it's out of warranty from the place of purchase, maybe bother them a bit about it. Last thing I'd recommend is dealing with ASRock for an RMA...

I'm not even trying to contact them. I don't expect them to care at all. I can bear a 60? loss. The problem isn't money, but just that I was really really disappointed.
I wasn't running any low-level application, and anyway I don't think software can kill the motherboard just like that because when I want to upgrade the BIOS from the operating system, it just saves the ROM and tells the bios to flash it at the next reboot, but the bios still has to ask the user for confirmation. So it can't have been done automatically or accidentally.

My hypothesis is simply that something broke in the hardware. Maybe a VRM? Some other circuitry?
The power supply is fine enough. It's an Antec NeoEco 400M, so no cheap brand, no cheap components, just a mid-range power supply. A single i7-4770 doesn't require that much power...

[Kano]

I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to return the board. I directly contacted Asus and after 1 week writing emails i got a replacement bios chip instead of sending it back. There are 3rd party suppliers where you can order that as well in case you don't habe luck. The mac adress of the network chip will be generic then however. I found the position later, manually fixed it, flashed a pure image with flashrom. With hotswap i have got now 2 working chips.

[elijahk33]

I'm abroad studying. So I'll not be in the country where I bought it for several months. I think it should be possible to get a refund or replacement with no problems.
Anyway the new motherboard works fine. I just hope it won't happen again.

[Ardje]

My hypothesis is simply that something broke in the hardware. Maybe a VRM? Some other circuitry?
The power supply is fine enough. It's an Antec NeoEco 400M, so no cheap brand, no cheap components, just a mid-range power supply. A single i7-4770 doesn't require that much power...

Common motherboard failure. You are not the only one. This is what warranty is for. At least in the EU.
I bougt 3 XPC K45, and six died (warranty). I gave up. It was just very bad manufacturing. The caps for the CPU VRM were al bulged in the end. You probably have bulged capacitors too.

Software can kill:
My macbook killed itself by crashing upon suspend, which I didn't notice when I put it in my bag. When I took it out it was cooked. Software regulated thermal shutdown is stupid on expensive pc equipment. So the price of the equipment does not really matter. And yes apple delivers shitty service. "Yes, I know this should fall under warranty, but since you have the extended apple care we will not try to make a fuzz about it". That was about the battery firmware, in which the batterij firmware actually kills itself. Fortunetaly not by blowing up.

But back to your case: don't sweat it. It's not linux, it's just faulty caps or something like that.

[Ardje]

But back to your case: don't sweat it. It's not linux, it's just faulty caps or something like that.

And to back it up: just do an image search for bulged caps...