New Asus Motherboard Reportedly Burned, Here's The Cause!

A poorly installed capacitor on the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard caused it to explode. (photo: doc. asus)

JAKARTA - Asus seems to have passed the end of the year with bad luck. The reason is, a YouTuber who goes by the name Buildzoid on the Actually Hardware Overlocking channel found that the Asus motherboard exploded.

At first the capacitor was found to be installed poorly on the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard which caused it to explode.

YouTuber Buildzoid found the issue popping up on the Asus support forums, as well as on Reddit and almost all the problems experienced by users were the same, then he looked into the cause.

Users reported that their motherboards had problems in the same places, namely in the two MOSFETs (metal oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors) next to the DIMM slots and in the Q-code reader.

As it turned out, users heard a small popping sound before burning a small part of their motherboard.

Buildzoid diagnosed the problem using only the uploaded image, attributing the Z690 Hero's failure to the sparse capacitor installed next to the MOSFET, not the MOSFET itself.

Then Buildzoid took a close look at the picture of the motherboard, showing that the text on the capacitor was actually reversed, it was installed inaccurately. With the capacitor reversed, it can result in reverse polarity, causing the MOSFET to malfunction and burn out.

Since then, Asus acknowledged the issue in a post on its website and plans to issue replacements to customers with affected motherboards.

"Going forward, we are continuing our thorough examination with our suppliers and customers to identify all possible affected ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboards on the market and will work with relevant government agencies on replacement programs," Asus said as quoted by The Verge, Monday, 3 January.