MSI A520M Pro mainboard - need boardview and/or hires photo's of components surrounding RT8894 PWM controller

[re-atari]

Hi all,

Recently I was donated a defective MSI A520M Pro rev. 1.0 mainboard, that I am now trying to get back on its feet again. The error description when I received it, was that it wouild not boot, with the CPU error led lighting up.

When inspecting the board with a magnifying glass, I noticed someone had slipped with a screwdriver when installing the CPU cooler. Not just once, but 2 times at that. Go figure. In the end the result was 2 scratches with damaged copper traces and a few knocked off (and missing) components around the RT8894 PWM controller. No wonder the board wouldn't boot up.

Sadly, I have not been able to find a boardview for this mainboard, only a schematic for the rev. 1.0 and 1.1 board. I already googled for hires photo's of this mainboard, in order to find out which components are missing and traces were damaged, but these were way too blurry or the area had a different layout. Attached are a few photo's I took of the RT8894 and surrounding area on my mainboard. This is area is situated between the CPU socket and the PS2 keyboard/mouse connector.

While inspecting the mainboard I noticed one of the sheared off components was dislocated and stuck to an adjacent capacitor (circled in blue). This looks to be a resistor and I think I can see where it's supposed to sit, but as it's damaged on one solder side, it will need to be replaced. Another resistor nearby (circled in green) also looks damaged, so will need to be replaced as well. Sadly neither has a marking on top indicating its value.

In the other damaged spot (circled in red) the scratch is such, that I cannot determine if any components were present there in the first place. Might well be there were none installed there from the factory.

So, I'd be very grateful if anybody could help me out with a boardview for this particular mainboard, or, if not available, with hires photo's of the area surrounding the RT8894 PWM controller. I'd also be interested to know the value of the damaged/missing components, but I might be able to deduct those from the schematic.

I realise full well this is a very basic mainboard that probably isn't worth a lot, but I merely see it as a challenge to get it fixed (if possible).

Thanx in advance!

[re-atari]

I'm happy to report I can now answer part of my question myself, in that I have finally been able to find a boardview for my MSI A520M Pro mainboard.

By sheer coicidence, I saw Mainboard Medic yesterday posted a video about repairing an exact same MSI A520M Pro mainboard on his Youtube Channel. I have been a subscriber to his magnificent channel almost from the beginning, every saturday I look forward to seeing a new video. If you didn't know his channel or haven't sucscribed yet, go ahead and do so, I'm sure you won't regret it! I think he (Daniel) is a Badcaps member, would be great to get in contact with him.

Anyway, in this video Daniel mentioned he (like me) had considerable difficulty finding a boardview for this specific MSI mainboard. He said Badcaps always is his first Port Of Call when searching for them, but came up emptyhanded. He showed several Badcaps posts, but strangely enough it appears he hadn't found my post. Maybe his video was produced earlier on and only uploaded yesterday, who knows.

In the end I think Daniel had to resort to a Russian or Chinese source to obtain a boardview. I noticed he googled using the MSI code for this mainboard (MS-7C96), where I had just googled its name (MSI A520M Pro). But regardless, we both came up emptyhanded. Strangely enough, my mainboard has the MSI code MS-7D14 rev. 1.1, but from what I could see, it looks to be identical to his. MSI seems to have produced no less than 6 versions of this A520 mainboard. I have found a few rev. 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0 and 2.1 MS-7D14 schematics, but they appear to be for a MSI B550 mainboard. No idea what's the deal with them.

Yesterday evening, after watching his repair video, I thought, what the heck, and tried another Google search using the MSI code MS-7C96. This time I did manage to find a boardview. It was on a website that hadn't turned up in both our earlier searches, not sure why...

Anyway, for the sake of posterity, I have attached both the MS-7C57 rev 1.0 and 1.1 schematics and the MS-7C96 rev 1.0 boardview. Hope this helps.

MS-7C57 rev 1.0 and 1.1 schematics and MS-7C96 rev 1.0 boardview - https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubl...-1-0-boardview