Another AssRock Board Bites the Dust?

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3dprophet

Limp Gawd
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Oct 9, 2020
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I have system with a ASRock H97M Pro4 board that suddenly stopped working. When I attempt to boot, the power turns on, but there is no VGA output, no HD activity LED, only some USB peripherals get power.

I checked all the connectors, CMOS battery, and cleared CMOS. I connected a speaker to the motherboard and there is no post beep of any kind.

When I power down by holding the power button for a few seconds, and attempt to start the system a second time, the PSU will spin up for a few seconds, stop for a few seconds, and keep cycling on and off. I tried a good PSU from another system and the exact same thing happens.

Anybody see something like this where the power cycles on and off every few seconds?
 
Try running MB outside of case on a piece of antistatic material, sometimes a long misplaced screw will cause a short.
 
My two currently active systems both run ASrock boards, both have been on and stable since I got em (One's an X370 Ryzen launch board, ones an X570 Taichi.).

Does sound like you have a short somewhere.
 
Thanks for the replies. I may try it outside the case.

How can the board short itself if the PC is not being moved or tinkered with? Corrosion?
 
Try reseating the cpu as well, sometimes those little springs in the socket need to stretch their legs lol.
 
3dprophet said:
Thanks for the replies. I may try it outside the case.

How can the board short itself if the PC is not being moved or tinkered with? Corrosion?
Click to expand...

That does happen from time to time, usually for me its because im either using different height standoffs, mismatched size screws, standoff is in the wrong spot in the case etc..

If you have the original motherboard box, try running the board on top of that, its a good anti-static surface (and good luck!).

Also, I can definitely say ASRock is my top tier choice for boards, along with ASUS. Theyve served me well for years, and I have ASRock boards in service with over 9 years of almost continuous use.
 
You know it might have been a powersurge and popped the esd chips on the board/ or psu's do eventually give out . Any luck with the board out of the case? As stated above I have had more than a few Asrock boards over the years and no major issues here, now gigabyte for me is a different story ;)
 
Asrock Z77 PRO4-M for 9 years, no problems. Overclocked the entire time. Hopefully you can get it working again
 
I'm not certain if this is your issue, but it sounds like something I've experienced before. Sometimes the data in the BIOS flash chip gets corrupted. You can try replacing the BIOS chip with a known working one that already has an appropriate BIOS image installed. You might be able to find one on Ebay. Alternatively, you can try to manually reflash your BIOS chip using an external programmer of some sort. I've rescued a number of motherboards doing so. I've seen this issue with all brands of motherboards and laptops, so I wouldn't directly blame ASRock if this is the fault.

I don't know if it will apply to your motherboard, but if you try to reflash or install a preflashed replacement chip you might need to reassign your ethernet MAC address with this tool, at least I had to when I reflashed an ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac board.

Some (generally higher end) motherboards can flash a BIOS chip without doing a proper boot using a BIOS Flashback option. Unfortunately I don't think your motherboard supports it. Check your motherboard documentation to make sure.
 
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brinstar117 said:
I'm not certain if this is your issue, but it sounds like something I've experienced before. Sometimes the data in the BIOS flash chip gets corrupted.
Click to expand...

You just need a SPI flasher and the BIOS image.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255077862149

It looks like the EEPROM is socketed on that board, so just pop it out and into the SPI flasher and reflash it.
 
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3dprophet said:
I have system with a ASRock H97M Pro4 board that suddenly stopped working. When I attempt to boot, the power turns on, but there is no VGA output, no HD activity LED, only some USB peripherals get power.

I checked all the connectors, CMOS battery, and cleared CMOS. I connected a speaker to the motherboard and there is no post beep of any kind.

When I power down by holding the power button for a few seconds, and attempt to start the system a second time, the PSU will spin up for a few seconds, stop for a few seconds, and keep cycling on and off. I tried a good PSU from another system and the exact same thing happens.

Anybody see something like this where the power cycles on and off every few seconds?
Click to expand...
I bought one of those ASrock C2750D4I boards and had trouble with FreeNAS crashing whenever disks on the Marvell SATA controller was under heavy load. I had to RMA it twice... I had already wasted so much time I eventually gave up and used only the Intel ports... and then it finally just died. Needless to say I'm done buying ASrock for server boards. I've been using Supermicro for quite some time and really like their reliability. The Xeon-D boards offer a range of power/prices. If you don't need a lot of power the X10SDV-2C is inexpensive ($330, which is great considering it has a CPU+Motherboard) and would probably be enough if you survived on an Atom. I have the X10SDV-4C+-TLN4F and a X10SDV-F (4 core and 8 core model respectively) and have been very happy with them. The Supermicro mini-itx boards only have 6 SATA ports so you would need an HBA to get to 8 or 10 disks, I use the IBM M1015s. Or if you can go to Flex ATX you can get them with 4 SATA + 16 SAS ports.
 
saadatrent said:
I bought one of those ASrock C2750D4I boards and had trouble with FreeNAS crashing whenever disks on the Marvell SATA controller was under heavy load. I had to RMA it twice... I had already wasted so much time I eventually gave up and used only the Intel ports... and then it finally just died. Needless to say I'm done buying ASrock for server boards. I've been using Supermicro for quite some time and really like their reliability. The Xeon-D boards offer a range of power/prices. If you don't need a lot of power the X10SDV-2C is inexpensive ($330, which is great considering it has a CPU+Motherboard) and would probably be enough if you survived on an Atom. I have the X10SDV-4C+-TLN4F and a X10SDV-F (4 core and 8 core model respectively) and have been very happy with them. The Supermicro mini-itx boards only have 6 SATA ports so you would need an HBA to get to 8 or 10 disks, I use the IBM M1015s. Or if you can go to Flex ATX you can get them with 4 SATA + 16 SAS ports.
Click to expand...

I can't speak to the Marvell controllers on that board, but all Atom C2000 series Avoton CPU based motherboards eventually fail due a design flaw from Intel regardless of motherboard brand. There's a clock generator built into the CPU that stops working after awhile. There's a way to bypass that and possibly get the board to boot again if you're a little handy with soldering.
 

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brinstar117 said:
I can't speak to the Marvell controllers on that board, but all Atom C2000 series Avoton CPU based motherboards eventually fail due a design flaw from Intel regardless of motherboard brand. There's a clock generator built into the CPU that stops working after awhile. There's a way to bypass that and possibly get the board to boot again if you're a little handy with soldering.
Click to expand...
reminds me of the sandy bridge sata ports had the same issue. Company I work for has a huge box of cisco ASA that had this issue lol.
 
Well I just saw this topic, but my ASRock Fatal1ty x399 board died similarly. It can partially power up, but nothing else. half the board has no power (ie the fan connectors, only half of them work) the LED that gives error codes is off, but some other LED does power on. It was out of warranty so I asked ASRock how much to fix, and they don't fix it they will send me a replacement at a discount so I just tossed it and upgraded to my current rig. I did really like the board when it was running but it was only the second motherboard that has ever failed me. But unlike the one MB that failed me that was 20 years old and barely used, the ASRock one was 3 years old only and used daily when it died.
 
Not only did I have "gaming" motherboards from Asrock before, but I just replaced my FreeNAS which had a total crap sandy bridge era motherboard that I bought used on Ebay from China. Like terrible power delivery, 4 sata ports, two memory dimms, smaller then even the MicroATX standard crap. Ran flawlessly for years.
 
I have an Assrock Z77 OC Formula that came with a dead 3770K :D

Its awesome, it runs my 3770K like a top. Only thing I don't like about it is how huge it is, I have to use my Define R4 because it is eatx.

My Asus board that I used to use with it wouldn't run all of my old school Hypers, but the Assrock does..
 
I have a spare Dell H77 with 3770 so I replaced it with that. The H97 was running an i3, so it's an upgrade from that.

I may try the ROM flasher. It sounds like the most likely cause.
 
I tried to perform AssRock to mouth resuscitation and flashed the bios chip. It looks like it wasn't the problem though. I used the green PCB flasher. It doesn't have the 5V flaw the black PCB version has.

Since the motherboard power cycles I suspect the power circuitry got damaged on the board. From my research so far if the BIOS is corrupted, it won't post, but the power will stay on (it won't cycle).

The computer turned off during a thunder storm so maybe it was a power surge. All the other electronics in the house were undamaged though.
 
I got more information. It was off but plugged in during the storm. Didn't turn on afterwards.
 
3dprophet said:
I got more information. It was off but plugged in during the storm. Didn't turn on afterwards.
Click to expand...

That wouldn't necessarily matter. A computer in general is more susceptible to smaller power spikes than other appliances. At the very least it should be behind a surge protector of some sort.
 
Spike damage from lightning is complex and often leaves the owner shaking their head when their stuff is damaged despite having it connected to a surge protector or UPS.
A good computer power supply will have better spike and hash suppression than most if not all of the inexpensive surge protectors people are willing to buy.

The more (wired) peripherals a computer is connected to, the more complex this becomes as well as chances of experiencing irreversible damage occurring from nearby lightning strikes can happen.

Best bet is if a storm approaches, unplug (not just turn off a switch!) your equipment. Mission critical equipment such as 911 call centers will be use things like galvanic isolation from mains and power conditioning that are well beyond the financial scope of the enthusiast.

During a severe storm when lightning strikes close (flash/thunder heard simultaneously) often you may hear a popping noise. This is a spike that is arcing to ground and carries enough payload if introduced into static sensitive electronics will destroy them.

I've been in rooms with covers off the panels and have seen the flashes when it jumps across the bus bars. It's loud like a .22LR going off and gets the adrenaline going! The flashover is 6.6kV. In severe cases like a direct strike to an overhead feeder the current can be quite high and using i^2R we see that all but the most robust industrial protection devices simply fail catastrophically allowing damaging energy into the home system which for sure kills any appliance with solid state controls. This is why proper grounding is so important!
 
3dprophet said:
Thanks for the replies. I may try it outside the case.

How can the board short itself if the PC is not being moved or tinkered with? Corrosion?
Click to expand...
Tin whiskers -- A phenomenon which occurs in electrical devices when metals form long whisker-like projections over time. I've seen it in some of the Navy's special purpose computers back in the day. The whiskers can (and have) caused short-circuits.
 
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