I could use some help here.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Ok, a friend bought the following PC off of Craigslist and now expects me, as I volunteered to help solve the issue, to figure out what is wrong. Unfortunately, he forget to give me the RAM and GPU so I cannot test those (yet) – although they might not be the issue. The symptoms are described below, as well as the entire ad –although it failed to mention the fact that the computer also came with three sound cards, two installed and one loose-, so any help would be wonderful. Oh yeah, I have a new drive ready and am planning to, until my friend gets a copy of Windows to put on, install Linux on the box – not sure if that would cause any issues, but if the problem is hardware related I doubt that would be the case. Thanks in advance!

 

The ad:

While moving into my new place this past weekend, I discovered that my less-than-one-year-old custom-built box doesn't get to POST anymore. Although I take pretty good care of my computers, I suspect that something was jostled loose during the move. Alas, I don't have the time to play detective, so I'm just yanking the drives and getting the parts for a whole new rig. This leaves the door open for selling the old one, so here you go, Craigslist!

 

Parts list:

 

-- CPU: Intel Q6600 quad-core 2.4 GHz 2 x 4MB L2, LGA 775

-- mobo: Asus Rampage X48

-- memory: 2 x OCZ Reaper Dual-Channel DDR 800 / PC2 6400 2 GB 4-4-4

-- video card: EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI-E 2.0 x16 HDCP-ready SLI

-- case: Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower

-- front control panel module: Scythe KAMA

-- power supply: Tagan BZ700 700W ATX/EPS 12V

-- LCD post diagnostic display (included with motherboard)

 

All of the parts themselves work, since I tried different combinations by swapping things out and none of them seemed individually faulty. If I had to guess, I'd say the case is shorting something out and the CPU can't power up correctly. The LCD diagnostic poster never gets past the "CPU INIT" display, meaning that it doesn't recognize the CPU. However, I put the same CPU in another LGA 775 mobo and there were no issues, so something is wacky. If you want, I can spend some time recounting everything I've tried to date.

 

For $600 OBO, you get the above parts (combined retail value is in excess of $1,000), pre-installed into the aforementioned case, and all relevant cabling. I will be happy to ship it to you for a small additional fee. You don't need to be an enthusiast like me to recognize what an excellent deal this is -- heck, just sell the parts again on eBay as refurbs and you'll make all your money back plus some tidy profit.

 

Happy geeking!

Edited June 9, 2009 by Deadly_Nightshade

[samm]

Do what he did, test it indivually. If the processor really is ok, the board's faulting. Although sometimes, it's something like a loose RAM module, graphics card, PSU-connector, HDD cable... that causes such errors.

Edited June 9, 2009 by samm

[Gorth]

Maybe he "reset" his bios somehow?

 

From personal experience with ASUS motherboards (something I have suddenly become very apprehensive of ever buying again), the bios doesn't recognise "newer" cpus out of the box and deadlocks after the first boot up. It simply fails to detect a valid cpu. My own fix was to hard reset the bios and boot up from a usb stick with a newer bios.

 

(it would boot up fine the first time, update it's hardware table, marking the cpu as unknown and die at the cpu detection on the second boot)

 

Don't know if it is the issue, but the symptoms sounds familiar

[Deadly_Nightshade]

My own fix was to hard reset the bios and boot up from a usb stick with a newer bios.

 

Would you happen to have a guide on how to do that? I,ve done similar things before but would like to make sure I get it right seeing as this is not my PC. If you don't have one that is ok, just thought I would check before I attempted that.

[Gorth]

Not at hand (I'm at work)

 

I'll check when I get home tonight. I think I just shortcircuited a pair of pins for a few seconds then let it boot up from a usb stick with the most recent bios version on it (which it was able to do after the "hard reset").

 

Edit: And switching off power completely while short circuiting it, as in disconnection the mains

[mkreku]

Resetting a BIOS usually involves moving a tiny jumper from one set of pins to another for a few seconds. More expensive boards may have a reset button for convenience (since overclockers usually have to reset their BIOS quite often). That's where I would start. I don't have much experience with ASUS boards though and with my ABIT boards I've never had to use any USB sticks.. ABIT usually has a default BIOS in a separate CMOS RAM for safety.

 

That's an excellent power unit, by the way. Tagan is quality (and very expensive).

 

 

Edit: Hey, I just read a review of that motherboard ( http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3208&p=2 ) and it turns out it IS one of the more expensive motherboards! You're supposed to find a CMOS reset switch in the I/O panel! Check the backside of the computer where you find all the other ports and look for a small button or switch! This should be very easy.

 

Of course, this will only reset the current BIOS with the default settings, but it's a start..

Edited June 9, 2009 by mkreku

[Gorgon]

Depends on whether it involves some assembly, then it might not have been fitted, or whether it just sticks out the back somewhere.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Well, I've been working on it without luck (I couldn't flash and update the BIOs although I'm sure it was user error and not because they cannot be flashed or updated)- although I did pull the CPU and am going to try a Core 2 Duo when one gets here (my freind is a spare over to test). Here's some pics though:

 

[mkreku]

And I thought I sucked at hiding cables..

[Deadly_Nightshade]

And I thought I sucked at hiding cables..

 

Yeah. It came that way and I'm not sure how I'll get them out of the way.

[Gorgon]

You can get these little plastic strips to tie em together.

[samm]

It's a Be Quiet! PSU, isn't it? First, you could take those descriptive labels away if they get in your way Test the board without any fan connected to the PSU, older revisions of Be Quiet's PSUs could fault if something was wrong with the fan connectors. If you plug them in again, don't connect more than one fan per connector (those labels on the cables say that).

 

The graphics card's connector looks a bit like it's not entirely plugged into the slot, you can see quite a bit of the metal connectors.

 

Make sure the back side of the mainboard does not get in contact with the case.

 

 

[edit]Oops, it's not a Be Quiet. But you could test it that way anyway also, I can recommend to test with one stick of ram, the graphics card, the cpu and nothing else connected first, then add one piece of hardware after another and see until which point it still runs.

Edited June 11, 2009 by samm

[Rostere]

The two RAM's should not be in adjacent slots, but in the two blue slots (Or in the two white ones).

[samm]

Totally depends on the mainboard In all of mine (which never were ASUS, but ECS, Abit and MSI), they should preferably be placed like in D_N's picture. And the colour-coding varies as well: Once some boards, different colours mean "RAM slot 1, RAM slot 2" (i.e., put sticks into slots with different colour), and on other boards they differentiate the channels (i.e., put sticks into slots with same colour). There should be a standard, but there isn't

Edited June 12, 2009 by samm

[Gorgon]

Check the slots for burn marks, who knows they could be shorted.

[Rostere]

I'm not telling my advice is the solution to the entire problem, but I seem to remember ASUS and Gigabyte mobos have a RAM configuration such as the one I described (maybe Taiwan is the common denominator here?).