MSI B360M Bazooka short on 3VSB rail

[karlp028]

I have an MSI B360M Bazooka with a dead short on the 3VSB rail (and VDD33 which is connected). The ethernet controller chip (UL3 in boardview) was getting very hot, so I thought that was the culprit. But after I removed it, the short remained. When I added 5V standby power again, I noticed the ground pad where the ethernet controller had been was getting very hot, as was the nearby hole for an m2 standoff.z

I haven't found the problem component(s) causing the short yet (no thermal cam). Does the heating of the ground pad mean it should be something near there?

[FriedFred]

It can also be a short inside a layer of the motherboard.
Is there any capacitor shorted in this area?
You can try to find the short with some current injection, use 1V and 200mA and check the capacitors in this area. Maybe a component on the board will get hot.
But it seems to me, there is a short inside the board or on the other side of the removed component.
It can be that the Ethernet PHY is not actively shorting something, but is getting shorted from another component afterwards.

[karlp028]

Thanks. I actually found it last night. There was a capacitor next to the chip that looked a little burned on one end. I removed it and now the short is gone. The cap and the chip must share a ground plane which explains why it was getting hot.

The board works now, except I have to add the LAN chip back. I wish I hadn't removed that.