You're really worried (Is your i9 9900k working?).
You're really worried (Is your i9 9900k working?).
It was a MOSFET close to the BIOS chip, about 20mm above it. It seemed related to the CMOS, but the evidence was unclear. I plan to look for a diagram.
You said everything was stock yet the motherboard has a custom BIOS coded by some internet anons. Higher power limits might have fried the CPU even if everything was set to Auto, you know, there's a reason for the limits, which is usually preventing the VRMs from frying by going over the spec on power delivery. You could try with another motherboard and memory, like in someone else's computer, if it keeps failing then it's definitely toast.
It wasn't configured for Auto, so I knew which boundaries to establish. I wasn't confident the auto would function properly since it might have been limited in power. I only changed the BIOS to test its impact. I was using F11 until these problems began. Applied EFFI to update it to the chip, but it didn't make a difference.