How to generally determine motherboard VRM is dead?

[Martin27]

Hi guys I have a question completely different to the main purpose of this forum, but I believe there are some great motherboard users here, who maybe are able to answer my question. I have several dead motherboards, lots of them for Socket A and some for Socket370. These boards are checked for leaking capacitors and bad flashed ROMs, everything is OK, but these mobos are though dead. My question is "how can I generally determine if there is voltage regulator module working in the mobo"?

[cp]

put in a known good cpu and measure the cpu voltage with a multimeter. you can even use an oscilloscope to measure the ripple if you're not sure about the capacitors.
if you don't have a cpu just put in some resistors that apply some load to the voltage regulation (not nice..but works for some first shot testing).

[KachiWachi]

If you are unsure, I would use test loads...because if there is a problem, you could destroy a perfectly good CPU.

Thanks.

[cp]

right, but since VRM rarely die..they are not the weakest part in the chain. other parts might blow up much earlier.