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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 @abcdqfr@lemmy.world. 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.
Good detective work! Adding liquefying thermal pads as a reason to avoid Gigabyte.
Why? I mean Gigabyte sucks balls but this stuff happens with thermal pads everywhere and it's not hurting anything.
What do you buy?
Asrock has done me well for budget builds, asus is what I happened to upgrade to for midrange. Honestly being dramatic, just haven't cared for GB historically.
So generally Pegatron. :D I used to buy GB because it was made in Taiwan when ASUS became Pegatron and went to China. Their quality decreased. GB used to put high quality components on their boards in comparison. But now GB is also made somewhere in the PRC. I've no idea where MSI are in terms of quality. We used to make fun of them using the worst capacitors back in the 90s/00s. Looking at their Newegg reviews, their 1-star ratings seem lower proportion compared to Pegatron brands and GB. Maybe they're nicer these days? The X570 replacement I got for this machine is an ASUS - "TUF" 🙄
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.
I think almost all thermal pads do this. Even my gpu with aftermarket thermal pads has these oil spots.