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Can a Motherboard die from a pin falling off?

Swervios
By Swervios
in Troubleshooting
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So around a year and a half ago I had an issue with my computer where it just stopped booting, I couldn't figure out the issue so I took it into a hardware shop. The tech there said that a F-USB 3.0 pin had broken off. Pin #10 just to be specific. I ended up just switching out boards and putting this board into storage. Could losing this pin on the board cause it to die? Also, don't think it matters but it is a Gigabyte AB350-Gaming board.

TIA

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By itself it strikes me as unlikely to cause a problem, though it's certainly not impossible.  The odds of an issue would be higher if it caused a short somewhere though

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Okay, thanks for the insight. I wouldn't even be able to boot it back up cause I have a 3000 series Ryzen and I wouldn't be able to update BIOS for it. So RIPPY.

 

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Basically it comes down to what does that pin do?  If it's a power pin or ground pin, or data pin, then in theory it shouldn't cause any issues if it breaks.  However, I know of schematics that can "fail unsafe" if a certain connection was broken.  For example, something like a textbook LVR.  If the route to ground for the sense resistors were to break, it would continue delivering power, but nearly at the input voltage rather than whatever it was supposed to regulate down to.  Obviously this could be bad if it went to the wrong place.

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It looks like it is overcurrent protection. But if its not in use would that still effect the board? I would imagine that would only effect devices that are using the USB ports.

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11 minutes ago, Swervios said:

It looks like it is overcurrent protection. But if its not in use would that still effect the board? I would imagine that would only effect devices that are using the USB ports.

If it's triggering over current protection then something must be shorted, and to use the board safely you'd have to somehow cut off the affected area.

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The pin that fell off from the F-USB is a pin for Overcurrent Protection. I would think that would only affect USB devices and not the board.

 

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28 minutes ago, Swervios said:

The pin that fell off from the F-USB is a pin for Overcurrent Protection. I would think that would only affect USB devices and not the board.

 

Oh it's used for OC protection, I see.  Well then in theory it should still work correctly, but of course it is dangerous to use anything with protections missing or disabled.

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