Random Computer Crash

One of our FixYourBoard workstations started wigging out yesterday. The symptom was that occassionaly you could see one of the screens start to waver slightly, usually up in the top left corner, or around the cursor, then maybe the 2nd screen would start to do it ever so slightly, then the system would crash and reboot itself.

At first I thought maybe a graphics card problem … until I dug into it.

Here’s what I found. This was not at all obvious until unplugging the power supply from the main board (which naturally was the very last thing I did before ripping out the main board). Well, the problem was obvious.

Fig 1. Main power connector on the motherboard. See the overheated, burned contacts.

Fig 2. Main power plug coming from the power supply. This holds the pin sockets which are actually the culprits. The charred posts on the mainboard connector in Fig 1. above are actually ok, just need cleaned.

Nice!

Easy fix, spliced in a new connector from a spare defunct power supply, cleaned up the posts on the main board … so far it’s passed the stress test … we’ll see after a few weeks.

Root Cause of Failure

… age, stress, heat, fatigue … much like this past summer in Texas!