Had a cable order come in today, so I figured I'd best just tear half the machine down and rearrange everything. Then I had an "OH 💩!" moment when one of my M.2 screws FELL INTO THE PSU. Yeah. RIGHT INTO THE POWER SUPPLY. How, you might ask? Well, my case has a perforated floor plate, and the fan is facing up because my EPS and 24 pin cables are just a teensy bit too short to reach properly. So... BLOOP! Into the PSU the screw falls. I tear down, pull the PSU out, and start shaking for all I'm worth. No idea if it came out or got wedged. So... I'm kind of at my "I'm screwed no matter what I decide" point. I make sure the caps are discharged, and I start peeling labels off the PSU to get at the screws. There was no way it would get RMA'd because some ham-fisted ape dropped a teeny little screw in there, and if I didn't make darned sure it was gone, I could face a very catastrophic failure. And at worst: I get zapped because the caps weren't fully drained and this post wouldn't be happening. So half an hour of fiddling, and half a can of compressed air later... nothing comes out. So I start checking the floor... and there's the screw, 3/4 buried in my carpet. So just to make 100% sure nothing was gonna go KABOOM on me, I dig out my old AM3+ mobo, plug the 24 pin in to it and spin it up. PSU worked as intended. I figured a couple hours of idle power would be about as good as 30 seconds of high draw if I was shorting somewhere due to an electrically conductive foreign object in there. Even if the OCP saves the rest of my rig, I'm out $250 on a new power supply because I'm clumsy.
Now for the meat and taters: the KC3000 booted immediately in the Gen3 slot once I got everything reassembled. I've got a funny feeling that the M.2 controller contacts in the CPU socket (not sure of the right wording there, but I hope everyone gets it) might be gunked up from some thermal paste that didn't get fully cleaned out. I opted to err on the side of caution and pull the trigger on the new MoBo. $130CAD with a Prime Day and "Welcome back to Prime" discount is a small price to pay for peace of mind. When I can afford a day of down time, I'll take the old board in and have the guys at MemEx test it before I send it off for RMA. Worst case, it's a PEBKAC again. Best case, they send me a new board and I sell it locally, or do another AM4 build.
I'm planning on doing some more thorough testing on my nephew's mobo when I build his rig next week. In the mean time, if anyone can recommend some good SSD testing software that's free, I'll be owing you a beer or something cold to drink.
Performance over Pretty.
