PC doesn't post, stutters power on & off every second.

25zerotwo · 14 Jul 2019 at 11:39

Morning folks, calling in a solid favour. Apologies if this is the wrong section, but felt it was close enough.

Cutting to the chase, I have an old (lets not worry about that) "Gigabyte Magma Z97" i7 4790K @ 4.50GHz Overclocked Enthusiast Bundle. I also have a Gigabyte NVIDIA GTX 970 G1 Gaming Edition Gaming graphics card.

My PC has been working fine, up until a couple of weeks ago it would freeze when I left my work connection (via Citrix receiver) idle for a while. The only way I could restart was a shutdown via the power button. Then one evening, I shut it down via Windows option and it shutdown, but then stuttered the power on, then off, then on again then off.

The next day I tried to turn the PC on, and it wouldn't boot. It would just turn on for almost a second, I heard the hd power up, fans turned, then off. It would then repeat that over and over. I shut it all down, checked connections of all hardware, reseated RAM and graphics card, cleared cmos, replaced bios battery, nada.. BTW no post or codes on the mobo.

Figured it was the PSU, so bought a new EVGA 850 GQ, 80+ GOLD 850W. Installed it last night, unplugged graphics card again, re-ran cables etc. Turned it on and bingo fired up cycled LED codes and then go to A6 due to reset BIOS.

Shut down, moved PC back to its normal home, plugged it in, booted up reset BIOS to default and then loaded windows. Problem solved... Shut it down normally (via Windows options).

Wake up, turn it on this morning, and it is back to the reboot loop again... :mad:

Anyone have any ideas? I'm really struggling to clue into the cause of this.

Thanks in advance.

25zerotwo · 15 Jul 2019 at 08:30

I see people are looking but no comments as yet. Just a bit of an update of what I have done last night. Pretty sure it's the Motherboard at this stage.

I have breadboarded the whole thing, make sure there isn't a short in the case. Issue persists
Stripped everything off (gpu, cpu, fans, ram, hd's everything...) Issue still exists.
Checked the PSU on its own jumping 'the green and black' powers on fine and remains on
Entirely in vein I put it all back together issue continues.

I have tried clearing the bios because I still don't understand why it came back to life briefly on Saturday, after stripping it down and rebuilding. Obviously same issue.

So it looks like I need a new board? In which case, what is a good replacement for a GA-Z97X-SOC-Force-rev-1 ? I have a modest OC on, taking it to 4.5ghz but otherwise they'll be no SLI or other madness going, so don't want to spend the earth on it.

Thanks.

Dave Burton · 15 Jul 2019 at 10:49

Hi, linking the PSU and getting it to turn on doesn't mean it's working, there are various different voltages being supplied, one of them might have failed or fallen too low to operate correctly. Have you tried a temporary PSU to rule it out as for power issues like this it's the first place to start?

Edit: Read your post twice, missed the part where you'd changed the PSU, sorry!!

linktoinsanity · 15 Jul 2019 at 14:07

I would try resetting the BIOS using the jumper on the motherboard before trying anything else, as normally I would point at the PSU, but you have changed that.

25zerotwo · 16 Jul 2019 at 10:03

Hey thanks both.
I have continued to play with it and I have tried resetting the bios via the jumper, manual switches and also choosing one bios over another (there is a switch that lets you choose bios 1 or 2).

From what I can tell, it's a corrupt bios issue, that is affecting both bios. When I power on the system, an indicator LED bottom right corner shows you which bios it is attempting to load. The first one lights up, system shuts down, second one lights up, system powers down, first one lights up etc. etc.

I am presently trying to see how I can flash a bios back onto it, but it looks like unless you can get into a bios you cannot use their QFlash or other updating system.. You can use some of the OC options top right of the board to bypass bios and the system powers on fine, but it doesn't boot at all.

I have found that I can do a juggle between the back up bios and the main one, which seems to get over-written if you power on. This at least loads the bios 'load optimised defaults message', but... it either freezes soon after that, or when you then boot into Windows.

Looks to be some historic issues with some of these boards and bios. Not really sure what more I can do now...?

Dave Burton · 16 Jul 2019 at 10:50

I had an almost identical issue with a Gigabyte board many years ago, and was able to recover it by purchasing replacement BIOS chips from a certain online auction site. Fitted both, and recovered straight away, but I ditched the board soon after. If your chips are replaceable it might be a cheap-ish option to try?

25zerotwo · 16 Jul 2019 at 11:12

Were they chips that you could just unplug, or was it a solder job?

Dave Burton · 16 Jul 2019 at 11:17

They were removable, just socketed, little 8-pin chips they were though naturally i'd recommend you check your board via the manual to see if they can be replaced.

chippy08 · 16 Jul 2019 at 11:57

25zerotwo said:
Were they chips that you could just unplug, or was it a solder job?

Looks like solder looking at the picture of the board M_Bios and B_BIOS

https://static.gigabyte.com/Product/2/4949/10102_src.png

25zerotwo · 16 Jul 2019 at 12:14

Yep, just trawled the manual now, no indication of them being removable, and not immediately obvious to look at.

chippy08 · 16 Jul 2019 at 12:46

25zerotwo said:
Yep, just trawled the manual now, no indication of them being removable, and not immediately obvious to look at.

You could try buying a programmer and a cable to see if you can do it that way.

Steveocee · 16 Jul 2019 at 12:46

Re-seat the connector on your CPU fan. Had a very similar and for me tantrum inducing situation recently where I had to strip most of my PC to instlal an M2 heatsink of all things. After rebuild had the same thing and it was because my CPU fan had pulled a couple of mm from the board, 1 fan was fine but 2 from it (splitter) caused it to error.

25zerotwo · 16 Jul 2019 at 13:28

Steveocee said:
Re-seat the connector on your CPU fan. Had a very similar and for me tantrum inducing situation recently where I had to strip most of my PC to instlal an M2 heatsink of all things. After rebuild had the same thing and it was because my CPU fan had pulled a couple of mm from the board, 1 fan was fine but 2 from it (splitter) caused it to error.

I have stripped the board all the way back to nothing and it still happens sadly..

Steveocee · 16 Jul 2019 at 13:29

The only other time I've had this happen was when CPU cooler wasn't seated correctly.

25zerotwo · 16 Jul 2019 at 15:17

So.... having checked out all of the caps for signs of issues, I started looking at the backup bios and main bios chips again. I moved it near a window to look at how I might go about using a heat gun to remove the chip and in the sunlight, I saw a residue that impinged on the main bios chip (just under the M of M_Bios).

I have cleaned this up with some isoprop and so far.... so good.

chippy08 · 16 Jul 2019 at 15:26

25zerotwo said:
So.... having checked out all of the caps for signs of issues, I started looking at the backup bios and main bios chips again. I moved it near a window to look at how I might go about using a heat gun to remove the chip and in the sunlight, I saw a residue that impinged on the main bios chip (just under the M of M_Bios).

I have cleaned this up with some isoprop and so far.... so good.

Thats good news its working as the Heat gun would have been a bad idea.

25zerotwo · 16 Jul 2019 at 15:37

chippy08 said:
Thats good news its working as the Heat gun would have been a bad idea.

Yeah it was at the very early stages of 'could I' almost certainly would have decided that no, no I cannot...

25zerotwo · 16 Jul 2019 at 16:51

Hmmm. So it boots OK, but it's not stable. Have had a few system locks in Windows..

chippy08 · 16 Jul 2019 at 17:56

25zerotwo said:
Hmmm. So it boots OK, but it's not stable. Have had a few system locks in Windows..

Check event viewer for any cluses to why it crashed

25zerotwo · 16 Jul 2019 at 21:06

And... its buggered again. Clearly something going on and I am not sure I have the ability to track or fix it. Nor the patience.
Going to have to get on eBay for a board I think.. 1150 boards are so expensive second hand and not much better brand new. Do I have crypto miners to thank for that??

Anyway, as you folks will be much more in tune with this than I, what do you reckon?

GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 LGA 1150/Socket H3, Intel Motherboard, Condition: Seller refurbished £103.50
BRAND NEW GIGABYTE Z97X-GAMING 5, Condition:Opened – never used £124
MSI Z97 GAMING 3 Intel LGA1150 ATX Motherboard *LATEST BIOS, Condition: Seller refurbished £109
or
GIGABYTE Z97X-UD3H-BK BLACK - Gaming Motherboard PC Intel LGA1150 i3 i5 i7 SLI, Condition: Used £109.95

I have a modest overclock, an M2 drive peeks my interest but I'll only ever have a single video card.

I'm personally leaning towards the top one.. but no real science behind that.