Case shorting, faulty motherboard, or both?

The_Blank · December 4, 2018

Hi, I'm hoping you can point me in any direction I haven't thought of yet.

Dedicated second stream PC. No real issues before this, other than audio issues with my elgato hd60 pro. I had this happen before, and got a replacement.

The replacement has been completely unstable after a short time. No signal, no HDMI pass through when signal was found, or running just fine. Fully powering down or swapping between 3 different pcie slots used to temporarily fix the issue.

Last night, my USB ports randomly glitched destabilizing my audio interface and killing a USB thumb drive. I reseated a loose USB 3.0 front panel cable, and the problem vanished. The elgato refused to work after that, and my on board network card became hit or miss on reboots. All Elgato drivers and software removed, updated, and reinstalled. No change.

I tested the elgato in another PC, and it works flawlessly. So I've turned my attention to the stream PC itself. I'll be removing all components and installing into a test bench to eliminate the case from the equation. The case expansion mounts never seemed to fit correctly, as if they were slightly too low making installations a pain.

If you have any suggestions as to what I might not have considered, please let me know. Especially if it's, "don't risk your PCIe devices testing this motherboard!" Or, "that card doesn't work well in newer systems, upgrade or change."

OS: Windows 10 pro

Case: NZXT 340 Elite
PSU: Corsair RM750
Motherboard: MSI z370 gaming pro carbon AC
BIOS: A6 (latest version as of last night)
CPU: Intel Core i7 8700k (stock)
Ram: 16gb G.Skill TridentZ DDR-3000
GPU: MSI gtx1060 6gb Gaming
SSD: Samsung Evo 860 500gb
Capture card: Elgato hd60 pro
USB Capture: Avermedia extreme cap U3
Audio interface 1: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2
Audio interface 2: Behringer Xenyx Q802
Elgato Stream Deck

Thank you, and sorry if the post was a bit long.

Edited December 4, 2018 by The_Blank

Bananasplit_00 · December 4, 2018

my guess is that one of the pins on the I/O sheild got stuck in a USB port or some other port tbh. could also be the motherboard going bad or standoffs not being used right

The_Blank · December 5, 2018

Thanks. I made sure to check the I/O when tearing down the system after my post. Nothing stood out, and everything seemed in order. Also, I couldn't see any misplaced standoffs, or anything trapped behind the motherboard or able to touch it. No burns or unusual marks on the board either.

The system booted fine in the "test bench" case without any PCIe cards. It did become unstable again after I installed the Elgato in a previously unused slot.

When testing the Elgato in another system again, it seems one cable from my HDMI switcher (ironically the one it came with) caused some signal instability causing the Elgato to lock up on occasion. I had to shut down every device involved (PC, XBox, switcher) before the Elgato would work again.

When I went to test this on the original PC, I found it had turned itself on. It couldn't recognize the card anymore, even in the slot where it had just previously worked. When I went to reboot, it hung and then refused to boot again.

Right now I'm considering just replacing the motherboard and the case, since I can't eliminate the possibility of either causing this. I'm just hoping nothing else was damaged, or damaged enough to hurt a new board...

Edited December 5, 2018 by The_Blank
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