No POST, no beepcode, nothing. Worked fine last night.

K

Kdot

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
83
Hi everyone, this is my first time posting on this forum. I am really starting to run out of ideas, and ill explain why.

A week ago, I had a fully running system that had worked fine for the past 2 years.

Asus P5L-VM 1394 Mobo
Asus 8800GTS 320MB (Now its a sapphire radeon 4870 1GB)
4GB of kingston DDR2 ram
500W PSU
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
320GB Seagate Hard drive.

What ended up happening is my video card began to fail, artifacting all over the place and eventually locking up. I sent it in to get it RMA'ed and its in the mail. I got bored yesterday and decided to upgrade my video gard since Radeon 4870's were on sale for 170 at my local shop.

The card worked great, I played some TF2, messed with the clocks a little bit, watched my little bro play some wow etc. It worked fantastic, and was only 170... Good deal it seems. I made sure that the power requirements would not be too much. The card only uses 180 or so if I remember correctly, so it should be fine with a 500W unless my math is beyond retarded.

Anyways, this morning I turn my box on and get no bios post message, no beep code, nothing. It powers up fine, but absolutely nothing happens other than fan activity and power lights. I can feel the harddrive spinning up, and the CDROM drive also works. This is what I have done so far:

-Checked all connectors, reconnected the video card power supply cables (What are those called anyways?)
-Checked that my monitors were working (both DVI and VGA monitors).
-Pulled out all sticks of ram but one w/ video card in. Nothing
-Pulled out all ram and video card, turned it on, Nothing
-Pulled out the video card, turned it on. Nothing
-Reset the BIOS by taking out the battery and using the reset jumper as instructed by my mobo's manual, put it all back. Nothing
-All of the capacitors on the motherboard look intact.
-As far as I know nothing got hot last night, I was watching the temps to see how hot the new card runs.

When I power it on everything comes alive, but I noticed that the harddrive activity light has nothing on it. Not sure if that means anything.

I don't have another video card or desktop handy to swap cards/boxes to verify the video card is working/eliminate it as the problem, but I plan to do that later on today and will update this post, I just had a minute to post so I was hoping I could get some tips.

Help is greatly appreciated!!!
 
Its possible the CMOS isnt being reset, I've had this happen more than once.
Unplug the machine before bed and remove the CMOS battery.
The PSU can keep the CMOS alive hence why it should be unplugged.

If you can try another decent PSU, we can narrow it down.
 
I tried a new PSU, no difference, the video card works in another machine, the ram is fine. Pulled out the CMOS battery and disconnected the PSU then left it for an hour or so with the jumper in the clear position. I'm fairly certain its the mobo now, I also noticed an area of the motherboard that smelt like burning solder near the southbridge when I left it powered on for 20 mins. Couldn't find any visible damage though. Also took everything out of the case to verify there was no shorts caused by the case. It seems as if I need a new mobo. Is this a fair assessment? Anyone see any flaw in my logic?
 
have u tried completely taking the computer apart and rebuilding it outside the case to check for a short?
 
No beeps at all without RAM nor Vidcard? Are you sure the case speaker is attached/working? :p If no beeps, and you've re-seated your CPU, then its probably your mobo. However, I am wondering the same thing as Shishkabob... which psu/ram are you using?
 
Kingston DDR2-800, and a Logisys 500W PSU. The entire system worked fine with my 8800GTS, and worked fine for a night with the new 4870 I put in. Then the next morning it just decided to die.

Yes I checked that the speaker was still plugged in and working.

I'm not really worried about it anymore, as I decided to upgrade to an i7 860 + Asus P7P55D mobo + 750W PSU this afternoon. As a side question is there anything wrong with using 3x2GB triple channel ram in a mobo that only supports dual channel? I can't seem to find any motherboards that are both 1156 and triple channel.
 
3 Sticks of ram in a dual channel board will most likely run the memory as single channel, effectively halving the memory speed (bandwidth).
 
If the PC powers up fine but gives no POST beep codes it means either the cpu or motherboard is dead; it's that simple.


It's most likely to be the motherboard since CPUs rarely die unless overclocked/over-volted.


Motherboards are quite complicated and it's certainly not uncommon for them to just die out of the blue.


Just a random thought though; Is there a problem putting a PCIexpress 2.0 card into a PCIexpress 1.0 slot? (assuming your mobo is only PCIexpress 1.0)/
 
Kdot said:
Kingston DDR2-800, and a Logisys 500W PSU. The entire system worked fine with my 8800GTS, and worked fine for a night with the new 4870 I put in. Then the next morning it just decided to die.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing thats a shitty PSU (Logisys). What model is it? And what model is the new 750W?

spine said:
Just a random thought though; Is there a problem putting a PCIexpress 2.0 card into a PCIexpress 1.0 slot? (assuming your mobo is only PCIexpress 1.0)/
Click to expand...

Not at all. PCI-E 2.0 is backwards compatible.
 
spine said:
If the PC powers up fine but gives no POST beep codes it means either the cpu or motherboard is dead; it's that simple.
Click to expand...

Should still post without a CPU. Fans and other things connected will power up.

Mobo is most likely dead. If they're gonna die, they usually go within the first few days in my experience.

I'd RMA for a different model if possible. I had one mobo once that died within the first 4 days. The replacement, the exact same board lasted 10 months.
 
Nighted said:
Should still post without a CPU. Fans and other things connected will power up.

Mobo is most likely dead. If they're gonna die, they usually go within the first few days in my experience. ...
Click to expand...

If there's no CPU, then the system will not, and should not, POST. ;)

In my experience, there is no usual time for a mobo to die. :p
 
Last edited:
enginurd said:
If there's no CPU, then the system will not, and should not, POST. ;)

In my experience, there is no usual time for a mobo to die. :p
Click to expand...

One basic function of a POST is to detect the CPU. A mother board will still provide beep codes without any hardware installed, including no CPU or RAM. I hope that clarifies things for you.

I won't comment on your second reply as I have no idea how many systems you've built.
 
heh, I know what POST does, but you said...

Nighted said:
Should still post without a CPU. ...
Click to expand...

When most people say a system will or will not POST, they typically mean the success or failure of the POST sequence; and if there is no CPU, then the system won't POST.

Sure, some boards will give POST error codes if the CPU is not detected, but many will not.

I hope that clarified what prompted my previous reply. :p
 
Last edited:
enginurd said:
Exactly. My point was, your last comment about your experience with mobo's usually dying within a certain timeframe was useless to us because we know nothing about your experience as well, lol. Besides, all boards/brands/models are different, so it wouldn't matter if you've built thousands of systems.
Click to expand...

Maybe useless to you, could be helpful to someone else that's not omniscient like yourself. :rolleyes:

I'm just providing my experience in such a way as forums are designed for, I'm not here to pontificate and define what is useful or not, that is up to the reader (and you I suppose).
 
Nighted said:
Maybe useless to you, could be helpful to someone else that's not omniscient like yourself. :rolleyes:

I'm just providing my experience in such a way as forums are designed for, I'm not here to pontificate and define what is useful or not, that is up to the reader (and you I suppose).
Click to expand...

You obviously missed how the confusion came about, and we have resorted to getting off-topic and personal.

@OP: Sorry, I'll re-word my omniscient pontification. I was merely trying to clarify what will and will not POST.
 
...but I think we can all agree that the OP's mobo is dead? ;)
 
Aside from checking voltages after jumpstarting the PSU is there any way to tell whether there is something wrong with it? I might use it at some point since it seems to work fine. The mobo doesn't work with other PSU's btw, so I'm pretty sure its the mobo lol (I would still like to verify the quality of my PSU since maybe the PSU killed the mobo?). Thanks for the input everyone.
 
Last edited:
You want to know if the Logisys is good? No, regardless of the model, its not worth keeping for anything. Which model is your new PSU? How can you tell its good? Danny had a good post on that earlier...

Danny Bui said:
What I look for in a good PSU:
- Total amperage on the +12V rail
- What temperature it was rated at
- Whether or not it was rated at peak or continuous
- Who the actual manufacturer was. Generally determines who the better PSU in most situations.
- Proper reviews (like done by HardOCP.com and JonnyGuru.com) of the PSU or a PSU based on the same platform
- Price
- Then decide which PSU has the better price to performance ratio.

And you really can't tell if a PSU is quieter than another without reading an actual review of it. However if the PSU uses 80mm fan, it generally means that it will be a bit louder than a PSU with a 120mm fan.
...
[PSU FAQs:]
http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1036
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=84&threadid=2260432

Remember that wattage doesn't mean as much these days. What matters most is where those watts are being delivered. For current rigs, it's all about how much amps are on the +12V rail since most PC parts draw their power from there. The more amps you have, the more upgrades (hard drives, video cards, PCI cards, etc) you can add. You determine the amperage on the +12V rails by first finding out what's the total combined or max wattage set aside for the +12V rails/section alone. So for example, the Corsair 450VX has 396W total on the +12V rail. Divide that total wattage for the +12V by 12 and you get how much amps the PSU has on the +12V rail. In this case, 396W divided by 12 is 33A. So the Corsair 450VX PSU has 33A on the +12V Rail. And that's plenty of power for your current system.
Click to expand...

And remember... not all 500W PSUs are built the same.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top