Pi Zero W Heating Rapidly and Won't Boot

[rj_f12]

My Raspberry Pi Zero W has a problem where within seconds of plugging it in it gets to a temperature that burns my finger when touched on the main chip of the board. Upon plugging it in, it also flickers the lights temporarily and shuts off. Occasionally it will output small amounts of text to a display then shuts off. I'm not 100% sure that these two problems are directly related, but I feel it would make sense as they both began to occur at the same time, and it would make sense to me if it was an overheating issue that crashes the pi. I've seen a few other posts along the same lines, but no real answer. I've tried several times to reformat the SD card and install the software, so I don't think that it is an SD card problem. I've also tried several USB cables and power supply's, but nothing so far has worked. Could it be a defective hardware problem? I've hardly used it other than setting it up and trying to browse the web, and then all of a sudden it started acting up on me. Any help would be appreciated!

[Imperf3kt]

Try booting the Pi with no SD card inserted.
If your Pi generates heat with no SD card, then unfortunately your Pi is fried.
Most likely cause is a latchup inside the SoC caused by any number of fault situations, most commonly, applying more than 4v to any GPIO, but also by shorting 3v3 to ground or accidentally reversing polarity (on Pi zero models only) of the microUSB power input.

If it is indeed a baked Pi, your only recourse is to purchase a new unit, as repair is neither economically feasible, nor possible without specialist tools and the parts to replace - which you cannot get.

[rogercw1]

I had this problem over Christmas - a Pi Zero W v1.1 from 2016 driving the Pi Huts LED Christmas Tree - worked perfectly for about three days, then died. The Pimoroni Zero W layered perspex case was quite warm to the touch, ok hot.

Swapping to another Pi Zero W showed there was nothing wrong with the micro SD card and that Pi is still running flashing LEDs on the tree until tomorrow.

Plugged the dead pi into a 5V PSU [which runs Pi's all the time] with a USB Detector the voltage dropped from 5.2 to 4.3 and it was pulling 1.8A - a running Pi Zero usually only pulls 110mA.

So its very dead - there's a thermal printed label on the back and that was marked where the SOC was cooking.. the label wasn't there when it was in the case, I've started labelling Pi's to keep track of them, at the last count I had about 15, now only 14

[RaTTuS]

this usually occurs with bad circuit design and either shorting or pulling more mA from the GPIO or 5V on the GPIO

[Jake Scott]

I had a similar problem with a standard Rpi zero yesterday. I had soldered the GPIO pins before testing it so was worried that my soldering killed it, but now i dont think it was. I tried reinstalling Noobs and flashing Raspbian but it was getting very hot as mentioned. Fortunately Pi Moroni sent me another which arrived today and is working perfectly so far. Is the heating a common error?? Can bad soldering kill a zero??

[davidcoton]

Is the heating a common error??

No, but not unheard of either.

Can bad soldering kill a zero??

Yes, easily.