Backwards Capacitor Causes Fiery Failure for Some High-End Asus Motherboards
upstart writes:
Intel's high-end 12th-generation Core processors use a lot of power and generate a lot of heat, but Asus' ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard takes things to the next level. A "potential reversed memory capacitor" in some boards can cause them to catch on fire.
The problem was initially hunted down by the Actually Hardware Overclocking YouTube channel, which diagnosed the issue using images from Reddit users and posters on Asus' support forums whose boards had failed. The reversed capacitor causes increased current leakage, which generates heat that subsequently burns out the neighboring MOSFET transistors. Users with the flipped capacitors noted that they noticed a burning smell or even fire before their systems shut down. Once the MOSFETs have burned out, the motherboard's built-in status display will show error code 53, indicating that the motherboard doesn't detect any installed RAM.
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