Dead USB = Dead Mobo???

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willie92

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 29, 2005
Messages
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So I go to turn on water-cooled NFS-7v2 computer and nothing happens--no BIOS screen, no POST, no nothin'. Then I notice that my keyboard isn't lit up (since I have a Saitek backlit keyboard) nor is there anything from my optical mouse. :confused:

That starts to get me worried.

As I start snooping around, I notice that the acryllic top to the waterblock on my CPU is cracked. :( There's a little bit of leakage, but nothing serious and nothing else on the mobo appears to be burnt out.

I haven't had a chance to take everything apart, and it's pure speculation at this point, but I wanted to get folks opinion--is the mobo dead? Or has the cracked water block also cracked the CPU?

I should have a chance to at least get the waterblock off tonight to see if there's anything physically wrong with the CPU. Just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this before.
 
probably the keyboard is USB, and the keyboard wont light up when the pc is powered on, so he thinks the USB ports are dead???
 
Based on what your saying.....cracked waterblock....water leakage.....no power. I think its safe to say thats something is fried. My suggestion is to take everything apart and test everything piece by piece. Does your PSU even fire up? There could be a mess of things wrong...won't know until you actually test them yourself. Sorry to hear that happened to you :( .
 
Yes--the keyboard is USB. And since I have both that and mouse plugged into the USB ports on the motherboard and they're not getting power is what's making me curious.

The PSU does power on. But I've got no video and no POST (the lights on the keyboard would also blink when the motherboard POSTed)

The NF7-S has some small LEDs on the motherboard which light up when there's power present (but not turned on) as well as when the power is turned on. Both of those function. So I know the MB is getting power.

My theory is that the CPU is cracked/fried. That would explain why I have no video and no POST. It's also probably the best case scenario...

I do plan to take it apart and test it piece by piece. I'll keep you updated on the saga...

Although this could be a good excuse to upgrade to a 64-bit CPU/MB and SLI... hmmmm....
 
Remove the waterblock and take a look at the CPU. If it's damaged, I'm sure you'll see it.
 
mluke245 said:
I'm gonna assume you didn't do anything like this guy: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=929770
Click to expand...

Thankfully--no, nothing like that...

Well, I removed the waterblock tonight--and found...

...what appears to be a perfectly normal CPU.

So, back to the drawing board... I'll strip it down to basics tomorrow--CPU, MB, memory and video card and start from there.

-sigh-
 
OK, I think I've figured out why the mobo isn't posting. :D

When I pulled my video card out I noticed that the contacts were corroded--then I looked at the AGP slot on the mobo itself---even worse :(

Anybody got any ideas for how to clean the slot on the mobo itself? The video card is easy because the contacts are exposed--just the opposit of the mobo...
 
The question now is if your AGP slot is shot...If its corroded I have a strong doubt it will work. Neither would I put another AGP card in there to test it (unless you have a cheap card and you don't mind possibley damaging it).

I would clean your card up and put it in another AGP mobo and see if it works. If thats all good to go then test your mobo AGP slot....maybe try cleaning it with a Q-Tip or something. Can you take a picture so we can see what it looks like? I'm assuming its corroded on the inside of the slot...
 
I'll take some pictures tonight. I should have done that before I cleaned up the AGP card (a BFG5900XT)--I've still got to get some contact cleaner to really clean it up.

Yeah, the inside of the AGP slot is corroded. I'm going to see how well contact cleaner works on that. I do have an old AGP card that I'll test with. My BFG may be dead anyway--we'll have to see.

This also explains why I was getting low power errors on the card. Looking at the corrosion, I'm actually surprised I wasn't getting more errors. I'm sometimes surprised how much abuse computers can sometimes take. (I've been deployed to Saudi Arabia twice and you'd be amazed and how much sand the tech guys will blow out of a working computer on a weekly basis).
 
Sorry, it took me longer to post pictures than I though. The pictures of the corrosion of the AGP slot didn't come out, but I do have pictures of the corrosion on the videocard and the cracked waterblock over at the water cooling link

I tried using some contact cleaner on the contacts of the video card, but it wouldn't all come off. I'll have to dig out one of my other computers to see if the video card is fried. The AGP slot is fried because the system will boot with a PCI video card, but won't even post with another AGP video card that I know is good.
 
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