Member Avatar for shadysoldier

I have a ASUS A8n-sli premium one with heat pipe....I had just the board in my hands nothing eles and it made a fast pace clicking sound.......HOW??????Not that ot bothers me more that i want to know HOW and WHY.Any hidden fans or something

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reported a bare ASUS board that made a fast clicking noise which stopped when the PCIe clip was pressed. and have already raised electrostatic and graphics concerns; the rest of this explains other likely causes and gives a practical checklist to isolate the problem.

Start with a careful visual/mechanical inspection:

  • Put the board on a clean, nonconductive flat surface and examine the area around the PCIe slot, nearby capacitors/inductors, and heatsink mounts with a bright light and a magnifier.
  • Look for lifted pads, cracked solder joints, loose glue on coil chokes, bent pins, foreign debris, or a loose retention clip that could rub or click when the PCB flexes.
  • Gently press (with a nonmetal tool) near the suspected area to reproduce the sound — do this only while the board is unpowered to avoid causing damage.

Isolation and functional checks to track down the lockups/artifacts:

  • Boot with minimal parts (CPU, one RAM stick, no expansion cards) to see if instability remains.
  • Try a known-good graphics card or the system’s alternate video output (if available) to separate GPU faults from motherboard faults.
  • Test RAM with a standalone memory tester and run a dedicated GPU stress/diagnostic tool on a known-good system if possible.
  • Test or swap the PSU to rule out marginal power rails; intermittent power can produce artifacts and lockups.

If physical damage (bulging caps, cracked parts, burned traces) is found, photograph it and consider RMA or professional repair. If no visible damage but problems persist after isolation, plan component swaps (GPU, RAM, PSU) or professional diagnostics rather than continued trial-and-error.

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Member Avatar for jbennet

please tell me you grounded yourself before touching electrosensitive components like the motherboard, if not that noise may well have ben static, and you may have killed your motherboard

Member Avatar for shadysoldier

Hmm never thought of stactic. My board is working and it didnt get shocked when i installed it. Odd thing is when i pushed the pci Xpress lever the noise stoped

Member Avatar for madoverclocker

it takes 20,000 volts of static electricity before you will feel or see a shock, but it only takes 3 volts to destroy a mobo. you are very lucky the mobo is still working.

Member Avatar for jbennet

always use a mat, wrist strap and touch an earthed object first

Member Avatar for shadysoldier

So is my board damaged?

Member Avatar for jbennet

maybe

does it work?

Member Avatar for shadysoldier

It works but i get random lock ups. Doubt it is my mobo tho. I also getartifacts.

Member Avatar for jbennet

artifacts means bad graphics card (if its built in then motherboard) usually due to heat or static, can be permanent sometimes

Member Avatar for shadysoldier

hmmmmmm...Is it possible i have alot of static in my pc...never heard of this before.
J/w because i hear glitches in my sound due to static

Member Avatar for madoverclocker

no, your pc is grounded

it is possible for you to have shocked the graphics card with your static when installing it, that will have caused the problem. or maybe you need a driver update.

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