Rusty chokes on Asus mobo.

[3volvedcombat]

Im just reading Wizzards post and its very correct what he is saying. I would use the motherboards anyway, I think the rusted chokes look good acctualy . Even though there Iron there sealed from oxygen/water/humitidy so they cant rust, the main artery is copper so thats all good to me also, AND AT LEAST there working chokes and theres no proof of many failing motherboards because of this or any failing motherboard for that matter. And you have to admit, that old p43-g31 chipsets arnt really that popular anymore and likely will be gone in a year or 2. But the 785g was a little supprise, dosnt bother my opinion on them. As long as the motherboard will work like any other motherboard and overclock just the same, then i dont mind.

but if they started doing this with video cards, im going to load my .357 and go on a trip to asus headcorters.

 

[RejZoR]

Who cares really? I'm not gonna give up ASUS just because of that and any store where i'd bought such mobo, i could return it right away, no questions asked. And get a replacement of course.
Anyone will confirm that this is a factory defect and not an user's fault.

 

[W1zzard]

which guidelines are that ?

 

[pantherx12]

which guidelines are that ?

The silver choke guideline!

honestly w1zz I expected you to know sucha simple thing

 

[HalfAHertz]

BTW did anyone think of this video, when they saw the rusty caps? Warning dangerously weird!

 

[qubit]

Did you even read the article.

1.) The issue only shows itself on a few low end boards, which likely aren't very popular, and hence have been produced and left sitting for a long while before being sold. The article even says probably 6 to 8 months.

2.) Because of 1, it means that the problem was likely not visable during the manufacturering and quality control processes. So the boards looked perfectly fine when they were boxed up.

3.) This is only really an issue that makes ASUS look bad IF ASUS won't RMA the boards because of the issue. If they take care of the problem, then ASUS has don't nothing wrong, and it certainly won't stop me from buying ASUS boards in the future.

Now my question is, because I honestly don't know, is the part thats rusting seems to just be a casing, I thought all the fancy magic of those chokes happen inside them. So if only the casing is rusting, how will that affact the actual performance of the choke?

Well duh, yes of course I did. The rusting is not just on the casing, but inside, causing eventual failure and possible destruction of the CPU. The article explained this.

And as far as flogging boards with a known problem without revealing it before sale is fraud, whether they "graciously" RMA them or not.

Did you even read the article?

 

[qubit]

Just curious . . . but what board is that?

I don't know either. I only know what's in that article.

TBH, I've personally used ASUS solely for nearly two decades now . . . and never had any issues with their hardware. Honestly, I've seen their hardware hold up better than GIGA's, or any other manufacturer. But, then again, I've only purchased their 1337, upper-end boards; only "issue" I've ever had was with a mid-range (P5W-DH Deluxe), and the CPU/mobo temp sensors were bad right out of the box; otherwise, the board was perfectly fine and rock-solid.

When it boils down to it, though . . . no matter what manufacturer we're talking about, the low-end and lower mid-range boards usually pack sub-par and questionable components . . . it's part of the reason they can offer those boards at such "economical" prices.

Plan and simple, with the PC tech industry, the rule of thumb that's held true for the last 30 years is "you get what you pay for."

Sounds like you've had a pretty good run with Asus and chosen wisely from their product range.

I totally agree with your point about the cheap components and getting what you pay for. These chokes are of the cheaper type, which fits in with this.

 

[newtekie1]

Well duh, yes of course I did. The rusting is not just on the casing, but inside, causing eventual failure and possible destruction of the CPU. The article explained this.

And as far as flogging boards with a known problem without revealing it before sale is fraud, whether they "graciously" RMA them or not.

Did you even read the article?

This comment makes it painfully clear that you have in fact NOT read the article, but instead have taken something and are trying to blow it way out of proportion to try and bash a company for whatever reason.

Where in the article does it say the rusting is anywhere other than the casing? It doesn't. It shows pictures of just the casings rusting, and they say it could lead to catastrophic failure of the chokes, but of course it just as well could not. Without taking the chokes apart and looking inside to see what is happening inside, we don't know if the chokes are even at any risk of failure. Also, when a choke fails, I've never seen it take a CPU with it, that is essentially totaly BS. When the choke fails, power will be cut from that Phase, that is what happens when a choke fails. This might overload the other phases, but all this amounts to is the CPU recieving less voltage than it is supposed to, which will not fry the CPU. These rusting chokes pose less risk to the CPU then most of us accept when we overvolt a processor.

Your comment about ASUS knowingly selling these boards with a defect really makes it clear you have not actually read the article, as it clearly says that ASUS more than likely did not know about this issue prior to selling the boards. It has nothing to do with fraud, as ASUS did not know of the problem before selling the boards.

 

[DirectorC]

I for one think it's pretty cool that ASUS is shipping boards with marbled components

 

[erocker]

Clearly the chokes are rusting on the surface underneath the laquer. The chokes were exposed to moisture before the laquer process. It doesn't bode well for the lifespan of the chokes, but since the oxidation is pretty much trapped on the surface it's not so bad, not good either. The oxidation easily could of occured after these things were packed up and shipped out to distributors. It's a hardware defect and it happens from time to time. One would assume that Asus has checked their choke supply by now. No company in their right mind would sell a product that they know to have defective hardware on them. So if you end up gettin an Asus board with rusty chokes, return it for a good one. O' woe is they.

 

[qubit]

This comment makes it painfully clear that you have in fact NOT read the article, but instead have taken something and are trying to blow it way out of proportion to try and bash a company for whatever reason.

Where in the article does it say the rusting is anywhere other than the casing? It doesn't. It shows pictures of just the casings rusting, and they say it could lead to catastrophic failure of the chokes, but of course it just as well could not. Without taking the chokes apart and looking inside to see what is happening inside, we don't know if the chokes are even at any risk of failure. Also, when a choke fails, I've never seen it take a CPU with it, that is essentially totaly BS. When the choke fails, power will be cut from that Phase, that is what happens when a choke fails. This might overload the other phases, but all this amounts to is the CPU recieving less voltage than it is supposed to, which will not fry the CPU. These rusting chokes pose less risk to the CPU then most of us accept when we overvolt a processor.

Your comment about ASUS knowingly selling these boards with a defect really makes it clear you have not actually read the article, as it clearly says that ASUS more than likely did not know about this issue prior to selling the boards. It has nothing to do with fraud, as ASUS did not know of the problem before selling the boards.

Yup, the rust is coming from the inside, it does say it:

Here’s a close up of these chokes, notice the bubbles. We’ve never come across anything like this before and it’s fairly clear that the rust is coming from the inside of the chokes with the moisture trapped inside trying to get out.

and:

This means that when the quality control was done, none of these issues would’ve been visible. A probable explanation to the rust is that the iron powder used to make the iron core chokes had water added to it during the milling process and the iron powder was then not dried sufficiently before the chokes were made. The moisture trapped inside the chokes has then started to rust the chokes from the inside out during the time these boards have been sitting in the warehouse.

And yes, it damn well is fraud:

The issue that we’re having with it all is that any responsible company would pull these products off the market. Instead we’ve heard that Asus is actually dumping the pricing on the affected models we’re aware of to try to clear its inventory as quickly as possible.

Are Asus revealing the fault before sale? Unlikely. I'd be well pissed if I bought such a board and had to return it because of this problem. Stuff like this should be a product recall. Period.

How do you know that a failed choke won't result in a CPU receiving excess voltage? Do you design electronic circuits? Do all CPU power circuits work and fail the same way? Of course not. It's certainly possible that when they go open or short circuit, at the actual moment it happens, you are quite reasonably likely to get a voltage spike, if not also a constant high and unregulated voltage. The power might even cut out; there's too many variables to predict what will happen at the point of failure.

I don't design motherboards, but I do know something about electronics, so if the article says this fault can fry the CPU, I'll take that as good advice and stay away from that product.

It appears painfully clear that you're reading the article, but not understanding it and then having a go at me about it...

If you're gonna try to pull me up on my posts yet again, you're gonna have to do better than this.

No company in their right mind would sell a product that they know to have defective hardware on them.

+1. It's fraud if they're trying to sell these cheap without revealing the fault first.

 

[erocker]

Perhaps you need to keep your emotions in check.

If you're gonna try to pull me up on my posts yet again, you're gonna have to do better than this.

Please keep the flamebait to yourself too please. Let's all try to post in a friendly matter and not get frustrated when someone has a differing opinion.


Thank you.

 

[Wile E]

Yup, the rust is coming from the inside, it does say it:



and:




And yes, it damn well is fraud:



Are Asus revealing the fault before sale? Unlikely. I'd be well pissed if I bought such a board and had to return it because of this problem. Stuff like this should be a product recall. Period.

How do you know that a failed choke won't result in a CPU receiving excess voltage? Do you design electronic circuits? Do all CPU power circuits work and fail the same way? Of course not. It's certainly possible that when they go open or short circuit, at the actual moment it happens, you are quite reasonably likely to get a voltage spike, if not also a constant high and unregulated voltage. The power might even cut out; there's too many variables to predict what will happen at the point of failure.

I don't design motherboards, but I do know something about electronics, so if the article says this fault can fry the CPU, I'll take that as good advice and stay away from that product.

It appears painfully clear that you're reading the article, but not understanding it and then having a go at me about it...

If you're gonna try to pull me up on my posts yet again, you're gonna have to do better than this.

If they didn't dismantle the chokes, they cannot claim it's rusting on the inside. They claim it's from they inside out, but have no evidence. Why is that so difficult to understand?

I claim it's surface rust trapped under some lacquer, and poses no real threat. See what I did there?

 

[qubit]

Perhaps you need to keep your emotions in check.



Please keep the flamebait to yourself too please. Let's all try to post in a friendly matter and not get frustrated when someone has a differing opinion.


Thank you.

Here we go again. Flamebait? What flamebait? I'm being attacked first and here's the evidence:

Did you even read the article.

This is his first post to me and is really quite offensive. This is the flamebait" and I'm just defending myself.

And again:

This comment makes it painfully clear that you have in fact NOT read the article, but instead have taken something and are trying to blow it way out of proportion to try and bash a company for whatever reason.

His logic is then way off, so I could demolish his arguments and the quotes from the article prove I'm right.

If you had been on the end of annoying posts like that, you wouldn't be too happy either, now would you?

I'm not getting "emotional". Given all this, it's quite reasonable to tell him to do better if he's gonna try and pull me up on inaccuracies and accuse me of not reading and understanding properly.

 

[erocker]

I'm just asking all parties that post in this thread to do so in a respectable manner. Simple. That is all.

 

[qubit]

If they didn't dismantle the chokes, they cannot claim it's rusting on the inside. They claim it's from they inside out, but have no evidence. Why is that so difficult to understand?

I claim it's surface rust trapped under some lacquer, and poses no real threat. See what I did there?

I agree the evidence would be even better if someone took apart those chokes (Charlie D in another expose perhaps?) but seeing rust under the lacquer is bad enough - especially that much. Their theory on how the rust came to be there seems reasonable, too. Hence, I wouldn't say they have no evidence, but I do agree that taking apart a choke would improve it.

One way or another these products should be avoided.

I'm just asking all parties that post in this thread to do so in a respectable manner. Simple. That is all.

Well yes, quite.

 

[Wile E]

I agree the evidence would be even better if someone took apart those chokes (Charlie D in another expose perhaps?) but seeing rust under the lacquer is bad enough - especially that much. Their theory on how the rust came to be there seems reasonable, too. Hence, I wouldn't say they have no evidence, but I do agree that taking apart a choke would improve it.

One way or another these products should be avoided.

That's where I might disagree. Are these cheaper because of this? Do they still carry the full warranty?

If they're significantly cheaper but still with a full warranty, it's worth buying in my book.

 

[qubit]

That's where I might disagree. Are these cheaper because of this? Do they still carry the full warranty?

If they're significantly cheaper but still with a full warranty, it's worth buying in my book.

Hmmm... I see where you're coming from and you have a point! For myself though, I never buy anything less than grade A, brand new mobos and stay away from the bottom of the range, as this can avoid potential problems with low grade stuff and tends to have the features I want. I apply the same principles to my PSUs and hard discs.

I also meant to add to my previous post, that yes, Asus could spin the problem as a surface cosmetic issue and hence the price reduction. It would then be upto the customer to prove they're lying once the mobo fails, which is frankly unlikely, isn't it?

 

[newtekie1]

Yup, the rust is coming from the inside, it does say it:



and:

Really, in the context of the rest of the article, its under the lacquer, and it sounds like they seem to think anything under this lacquer is "inside" the choke.

Again, without anyone actually taking the chokes apart, no claim can be made that the rust is coming from the inside of the choke.

And yes, it damn well is fraud:



Are Asus revealing the fault before sale? Unlikely. I'd be well pissed if I bought such a board and had to return it because of this problem. Stuff like this should be a product recall. Period.

How do you know that a failed choke won't result in a CPU receiving excess voltage? Do you design electronic circuits? Do all CPU power circuits work and fail the same way? Of course not. It's certainly possible that when they go open or short circuit, at the actual moment it happens, you are quite reasonably likely to get a voltage spike, if not also a constant high and unregulated voltage. The power might even cut out; there's too many variables to predict what will happen at the point of failure.

I don't design motherboards, but I do know something about electronics, so if the article says this fault can fry the CPU, I'll take that as good advice and stay away from that product.

It appears painfully clear that you're reading the article, but not understanding it and then having a go at me about it...

If you're gonna try to pull me up on my posts yet again, you're gonna have to do better than this.

It isn't fraud because ASUS had no knowledge of the problem before the boards were sold.

Guess what I "heard", I heard that ASUS wasn't dumping the price to move the stock...(See what I did there, anyone can say they've heard anything they want. Without it actually being true or obvious, it shouldn't be given an ounce of credit.)

I don't know though, I wonder if ASUS is dumping the price to move stock because of the bad chokes, or it could possibly be because 775 is dying and ASUS has a huge stockpile of boards that are about to be totally obsolete...the article even hints at this... I wonder which is more logical...of course ASUS has been dropping prices on their 775 boards accross the board...but I'm sure that is because all of those have defective parts also, nothing to do with 775 dying...

I know plenty about electronics and specifically computer parts, and I know when a choke fails it doesn't take the CPU out with it.

 

[TheMailMan78]

I talked to my old man about this and he started to laugh at me. He was a weapons avionics expert in Vietnam. Needless to say he worked on electronics in a humid environment. I asked him if a rusty choke would affect a circuit in any way and his exact words were "Chokes can't rust. They are made of f#$King copper. They can oxidize but not rust." Basically nothing will happen to the to the choke even after oxidization. His only concern was with the lacquer itself. He said that good lacquer would never "cure" properly on anything with trapped moister. He said if those things get hot and that lacquer softens and melts any you could have a fried circuit if its conductive.

I think my old man is a little nuts but he seems to make sense on this one.

 

[cdawall]

I would be a little surprised if it was copper, because it's not magnetic. But then again, it might possible for fine tuning low value chokes and I don't design these things. After all, just a coil with nothing but air inside it makes a choke too.

do you even understand the basics behind electronics? current traveling through a chock (coil of wire) creates a magnetic field using inductance and copper is used for its superior conductivity and copper wont rust. iron is only used to boost this magnetism ti has nothing to really do with conduction just induction and being rusted makes no difference with that.

 

[AsRock]

Just a thought. If that was only rust we were seeing, it wouldn't be that reflective. That's under a clear coating of some kind. Might explain the "boils". Bad chemical reaction with a top clear coat maybe? And if that's the case, it's not in contact with air, thus while not looking good not going to be a problem.

Yeah same here looks like a bad coating they have used. They look like they might of been black to start with and with that said who gave the go ahead to use it should be kicked in da ass.

Maybe it's a coating that ASUS have used to tell when the mobo has been pushed passed their specs.

EDIT: If there was rust inside it only be a issue if it degraded the coating on the copper wire which at a guess would do over time.

 

[imperialreign]

I totally agree with your point about the cheap components and getting what you pay for. These chokes are of the cheaper type, which fits in with this.

Sure - motherboard manufacturers are notorious for using lower quality components on their lower-end boards . . . actually, all hardware manufacturers do this with their products.


The one thing, though, that sticks out in the article to me is the fact that the board(s) in question were shelved for 6-8 months from their date of manufacture. Now, environment comes heavily into play, and not all warehouses are climate controlled. If the warehouse where these motherboards were stored was subject to extreme heat and humidity, it can accelerate problems.

As well, the problem could've been inherent to the chokes from their manufacturing and storage - who knows how long those were sitting in storage before beind shipped off to another production facility for use on the motherboards? The evidence of "popcorn" in some of the pics (the raised bubbles in the lacquer) says to me that there was already some amount of moisture (or possibly checmical) present on the surface of the chokes when the lacquer was applied. It would take a long while for it to rise to the surface, and only heat and additional humidity would facilitate it.

 

[qubit]

do you even understand the basics behind electronics?

Yes. Do you understand what I posted?

current traveling through a chock (coil of wire) creates a magnetic field using inductance and copper is used for its superior conductivity and copper wont rust. iron is only used to boost this magnetism ti has nothing to really do with conduction just induction and being rusted makes no difference with that.

I was talking about the core of the choke, you know, the bit between the coil. As pantherx12 said it was made of copper, I was a little surprised and explained why. You have misunderstood what I said.

Sticking something magnetic between them boosts the magnetic field. Putting something non-magnetic doesn't. It is possible however, that putting some non-magnetic material there could aid stability in some way when high frequency current is put through the choke, like you would get in a switching regulator on a mobo.

I suggest reading my original post and the one from pantherx12 to get the full picture about what I was saying.

I hope this has clarified it for you. Please try to be a little more pleasant if you don't understand something and I will be perfectly nice to you.

Sure - motherboard manufacturers are notorious for using lower quality components on their lower-end boards . . . actually, all hardware manufacturers do this with their products.


The one thing, though, that sticks out in the article to me is the fact that the board(s) in question were shelved for 6-8 months from their date of manufacture. Now, environment comes heavily into play, and not all warehouses are climate controlled. If the warehouse where these motherboards were stored was subject to extreme heat and humidity, it can accelerate problems.

As well, the problem could've been inherent to the chokes from their manufacturing and storage - who knows how long those were sitting in storage before beind shipped off to another production facility for use on the motherboards? The evidence of "popcorn" in some of the pics (the raised bubbles in the lacquer) says to me that there was already some amount of moisture (or possibly checmical) present on the surface of the chokes when the lacquer was applied. It would take a long while for it to rise to the surface, and only heat and additional humidity would facilitate it.

Sounds perfectly plausible, yes. It really would be a good idea if some enterprising reporter were to cut one of those chokes open and see exactly how far this corrosion has gone. However, I have a feeling that this will blow over unfortunately and it'll never happen.

Regarding Asus dumping their dodgy stock: remember a while back with those dodgy Seagate 1TB drives that had a firmware lockup problem if certain power cycling/logging conditions were met? They wouldn't work at all when this happened and had to be reprogrammed, which meant an RMA.

A while later, various retailers had Seagate 1TB drives on "special offer"...

Yeah, this practice is wrong and its rife.

 

[Wile E]

Regarding Asus dumping their dodgy stock: remember a while back with those dodgy Seagate 1TB drives that had a firmware lockup problem if certain power cycling/logging conditions were met? They wouldn't work at all when this happened and had to be reprogrammed, which meant an RMA.

A while later, various retailers had Seagate 1TB drives on "special offer"...

Yeah, this practice is wrong and its rife.

I don't think it's wrong as long as they discount it and still offer a full warranty. I would've bought one of those 1TB drives if they were discounted enough.