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So I had some recent trouble with my month old build. A couple weeks ago I had a random bluescreen which flashed away before I could read any information with it. At first I thought my mobo just went bad but after a lot of digging and looking at the ram sticks I think I found the cause for the dead ram and the dead mobo.

Pics can be found here
https://www.box.com/s/9d76cdd4d7bf68606171

One stick allows the mobo to post but the other will not. That stick has a bit of copper showing through and I /think/ it shorted out causing it and the motherboard to go bad. I remember seeing an LED code pop up on the mobo which the provided book indicates is a "southbridge" issue. I just hope G.Skill has a quick RMA process.. I'm stuck without a working computer until I get working RAM.

I'm not sure what those pics are showing, and in any case, the RAM doesn't tie into the southbridge (although a failure mode of the system CPU and/or RAM could produce cascading errors throughout the system, and the BIOS may have just grabbed the first serious error code that it found).

When you say that one of the sticks allows the motherboard to POST, did you try placing that stick in each of the memory slots and make sure everything still worked? If not, I would be a bit leery of just reinstalling the RMA'd equipment and then booting 'er back up. Worst-case you get one of those situations where A went bad first, A fried B, replace A, B fries A, replace A and B while screaming into a pillow...

The light discoloration just under the edge of the heat spreader is what I was pointing out. And yes I checked every slot with each stick. What the pic does not show is the copper smidge showing through the PCB. On the top of the PCB and the inside of the spreader there is a burnt discoloration that seems to be where a short happened. I'm assuming this did enough damage to the ram slots to make the mobo fry out. I did try using a 1gig stick from another computer and I was given the same symptoms. It would post but refused to boot or even load from DVD. I also loaded the bad ram into ther other comp and it threw up memory errors and blue screens. Sorry for not elaborating on this with my orginal post.

Philldoe wrote:

The light discoloration just under the edge of the heat spreader is what I was pointing out. And yes I checked every slot with each stick. What the pic does not show is the copper smidge showing through the PCB. On the top of the PCB and the inside of the spreader there is a burnt discoloration that seems to be where a short happened. I'm assuming this did enough damage to the ram slots to make the mobo fry out. I did try using a 1gig stick from another computer and I was given the same symptoms. It would post but refused to boot or even load from DVD. I also loaded the bad ram into ther other comp and it threw up memory errors and blue screens. Sorry for not elaborating on this with my orginal post.

In that case, I would write the board off as lost. Hopefully it didn't also blow the memory controller in the CPU, but it's not sounding good...

Humm looks like you should pray to the cpu gods since i am assuming its a sandy/ivy type cpu with the memory controller integrated into the cpu itself, like Ludi said.
Do you happen to have any 1155 motherboards you can test your cpu in, perhaps a friends board or something else you have lying around. Before i would do anything i would make sure your cpu is still ok, especially if its a cpu that costs more then a motherboard.
If you can't verify your cpu is still ok. I would perhaps purchase a 40$ g530 celeron to place into your questionable motherboard before chancing killing a much more expensive cpu.
I have a g530 celeron just collecting dust until i can afford to build from scratch another HTPC.......i would loan it to you if you lived close by in the Philadelphia/New Jersey/Delaware tri state area. PM me if you do live close by i would be happy to help.

I've already sent the mobo and RAM out for RMA. if the new parts don't fix the issue Then the CPU will be the next step. I did not have a mobo to test the CPU in as all of the other computers Friends and I have are AMD based.