Anyone else run into this much bad luck ?

thedoc46 · 12 Sep 2020 at 01:15

So last week, i had the bright idea of doing an upgrade. Every couple of yrs, i like to get myself on new hardware. This round i ordered a new Z490 Asrock mobo, an i7 10770k, and 32gb of g-skill 3600 DDR4. with the plan of getting my hands on a 3080 as soon as i can order one.

Board arrives, put everything together, and the thing wouldn't post with the memory in A2_B2, citing DRAM as the error on the Post Checker light. Tried some known working DDR4, still no joy. Managed to get it to boot using only one stick, and tested each stick to make sure my new memory worked. This is along with other weird issues such as the board losing its video when removing a flash drive. Did a BIOS update and that didn't fix. So i said ok probably a bad board, send it back.

Put my old Z270, i7 7700k, 1080ti, 16gb DDR4 and got my old gear working like a treat again.

Ordered an MSI Z490 MPG Gaming Plus, put it all together. And this one posted, but for some weird reason, it wouldn't load Windows. I could only get it to go straight into its UEFI bios.

Making sure i had only my windows boot drive plugged in, and even ensuring it was plugged into the SATA0 (not that it should matter) port, I checked all my settings / cables etc i personally couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't boot into Windows, i thought maybe flash the bios from the out of the box A10 to A20 hoping that the board and SSD were having a compatibility issue, that a BIOS fix may resolve.

So anyway, loaded the bios onto a flash drive using a different computer, did its EZ Flash, watched it upgrade, then it shut off, as i'd normally expect it too. Now its completely dead. Completely bricked. Will not power on or nothing.

I tried unplugging everything, replugging everything back in and even tried shorting the CMOS jumper with a jumper cap. But still nothing. its completely bricked. All i did was a bios update.

So anyway, i'm about to put my old mobo, cpu and ram back in and i guess i'll have to send this board back too.

Just weird i'm running into so much bad luck. Never have i had these many issues before. Sure over the last 25 yrs, i may have had one RMA board like back in the 90's, any maybe one more, cos i typically upgrade every 2-3 yrs, which entails a lot of upgrades over the yrs, but man this round is really giving me a lot of grief.

Has anyone else run into this much bad luck trying to do a relatively simple upgrade.. i should also mention, i'm pretty damn careful with static knowing all too well, what a static charge can do.. i just don't get why i'm having to chase my tail so much this time round.

Rroff · 12 Sep 2020 at 03:04

Should have bought a Ryzen

I always find it quite tense getting that initial POST going - so often there are RAM incompatibilities or something silly like the heatsink causing some board flex or the CPU cooler back plate shorting a component on the motherboard, etc.

thedoc46 · 12 Sep 2020 at 03:35

Rroff said:
Should have bought a Ryzen

I always find it quite tense getting that initial POST going - so often there are RAM incompatibilities or something silly like the heatsink causing some board flex or the CPU cooler back plate shorting a component on the motherboard, etc.

Well i'm back up on my trusty Asrock Z270, i7 7700k again. Which is nice, as there was always that small chance my PSU may of died, cos there was NOTHING coming off the MSI. Not even trying to power up....nada.. So anyway thankfully it was the mobo and not the PSU. I've now ordered a new Asus TUF Gaming, Z490. Hopefully the third time is a charm. I didn't want to go with Ryzen cos i do a lot of Premiere, and my understanding is Intel is just more stable. Also i have an Acer IPS 144hz g-sync panel, so married to gsync and yeah i know you can mix and match, but less likely to run into issues sticking with Intel on CPU & GPU.

I'm with you on the tense moment getting that post. Soon as i see it post i'm like hell yeah !

orbitalwalsh · 12 Sep 2020 at 06:50

Aorus z490

pp111 · 12 Sep 2020 at 07:00

Rroff said:
Should have bought a Ryzen

I always find it quite tense getting that initial POST going - so often there are RAM incompatibilities or something silly like the heatsink causing some board flex or the CPU cooler back plate shorting a component on the motherboard, etc.

Yes it is tense. Especially some boards that mess about a bit on their first boot.

EsaT · 12 Sep 2020 at 13:40

Maybe that's nature's way of telling you to move from stagnated Intel.
(instead of buying another CPU of same architecture)

thedoc46 said:
Also i have an Acer IPS 144hz g-sync panel, so married to gsync and yeah i know you can mix and match, but less likely to run into issues sticking with Intel on CPU & GPU.

Actually Intel won't ever support Nvidia's chain and ball.
But VESA adaptive sync aka FreeSync support is coming, when ever Intel finally gets those discrete gaming cards out.

thedoc46 · 13 Sep 2020 at 04:46

lol, my luck didn't change. Got my Asus Z490 TUF Gaming plus today. And like a fool, once everything was up and running, hardware wise, i did a BIOS update.. And while it didn't brick like the MSI yesterday, it did no longer allow me to get past the BIOS. All it would do is go blank. I tried everything including throwing the kitchen sink at it.

I've tried reverting the bios back to what it came with - didn't work, eeen tried a version inbetween no luck.

I've tried changing to the onboard GPU - didn't work

I've tried removing the CMOS battery and PSU supply - didn't work

I've tried a different LCD (non g-sync) - didn't work

I even tried removing some DDR4 in hope that it may reset the bios into life again.. didn't work

It won't even boot to a windows recovery flash drive or install ISO... just a blank screen with the LCD not going in standby ?????? somehow this bios update managed to permanently disable any video output once it got past the UEFI screen

I'd love to say got any idea's ? but in the end after a few hrs of messing around, i just put my old mobo back in, and its currently doing a macrium restore, back to where i was a few days ago, before all these upgrade shenanigans.

All i can say to myself is wow. So three mobo's. one sorta dead on arrival, one died after a bios update and the other one sort of borked itself.

freddie64 · 13 Sep 2020 at 07:27

Have you tried using the 8 And 4 pin CPU power cables?

Does the G-Skill RAM work on your old PC?

Could a faulty CPU cause these problems?

Not very good at fault finding on a PC that is not in front of me and these are the only things i can think of.

EsaT · 13 Sep 2020 at 12:24

thedoc46 said:
somehow this bios update managed to permanently disable any video output once it got past the UEFI screen

Could try playing with CSM settings, in case if there's some problem with graphics card's firmware and UEFI boot process.
Though in that case you really shouldn't even get UEFI screen.

But looks really like you should give up on Intel and start looking for Zen3 release in 8th of next month...

thedoc46 · 13 Sep 2020 at 19:48

freddie64 said:
Have you tried using the 8 And 4 pin CPU power cables?

Does the G-Skill RAM work on your old PC?

Could a faulty CPU cause these problems?

Not very good at fault finding on a PC that is not in front of me and these are the only things i can think of.

I can't imagine a faulty CPU causing the issue. I would expect the Post Check to just fail with a CPU warning. The memory worked fine on the last two boards. All up until the point i flashed the bios's. The first board probably just had a bad B2 slot. Cos i could get it to work using only one stick in the A2. The only thing i really did wrong was update my bios's on the last two boards, which shouldn't be a problem and it certainly shouldn't have a.\ killed the MSI, no fans no power nothing! and b.\ messed up the Asus to the point of not being able to recover it back to how it was for love nor money.

I now know why the MSI couldn't see the Windows install on my boot drive. Its cos it wasn't on a GPT partition, and new UEFI's by default, have CSM disabled. But I now have that fixed and converted my windows drive to GPT and i'm typing this from the machine that i've now put back together. So my case, GPU, SSD's and PSU which i was re-using are all fine.

There is a possibility there was something i missed on the Asus UEFI bios, to get a video display past the UEFI, but i did try a ridiculous amount of troubleshooting, none of which helped, so i suspect it's an isolated incident, as no-one else reported it. Sure get a blank screen no bios, do a cmos reset and you're good.... but to get a bios display and nothing after ? that was weird.

Anyway shopping for a new mobo now. I'm in the US, so its literally free next day delivery via a well known supplier over here and just drop the other off at a drop off location up the road. I think this time i will AVOID all temptation to update the bios, and the take from this is unless its 'actually' broken don't try and fix it via a bios update.

Skynet5 · 13 Sep 2020 at 23:47

Never. Might be CSM.

thedoc46 · 14 Sep 2020 at 23:58

So finally up and running with a new mobo. This round i got an MSI Tomohawk.. Rec'd it today, and everything for once went sweet as a nut ! Didn't even bother to re-install Windows. Plugged it all in. Windows booted, it detected the new mobo. I ran a few drivers and so far it seems to be running without a single hiccup. Even with a slight XMP overclock. I am NOT updating the BIOS. Just sticking to what i got ! But finally, yep i'm on my i7 10770k, Z490 32gb 3600 DDR.. With a bit of luck i'll be able to order a 3080 on the 17th. But not holding out too much hope of being able to get my hands on one. My 1080ti will have to suffice for now.

wolfie138 · 15 Sep 2020 at 09:42

when you say you didn't reinstall Windows, do you mean you took your old OpSys drive and just plugged it in to the new build? I thought [was told] Windows kinda ties itself to your configuration and it wouldn't work if it booted and didn't detect the components of the old system? or has that changed - admittedly, i was told this yonks back when i needed a new mobo, and was told i'd have to reinstall Windows etc.

thedoc46 · 15 Sep 2020 at 21:46

wolfie138 said:
when you say you didn't reinstall Windows, do you mean you took your old OpSys drive and just plugged it in to the new build? I thought [was told] Windows kinda ties itself to your configuration and it wouldn't work if it booted and didn't detect the components of the old system? or has that changed - admittedly, i was told this yonks back when i needed a new mobo, and was told i'd have to reinstall Windows etc.

I've been building PC's since the early 90's, and you'd ALWAYS have to re-install otherwise you'd have a whole host of problems. Now with Windows 10, you can just change your sata controller to standard, shutoff, put the new mobo in, turn on, allow it to configure itself, run the new chipset drivers, preferably off the mobo's website and away you go. Do make some pre-requisite determinations however. Like are you running an MBR or GPT Windows 10 partition. Most new mobo's want you to be running a GPT. It will allow you to run in compatibility mode CSM, but the UEFI's prefer GPT.. What i did, is imaged my MBR boot drive with Win10 install using Macrium, created the new GPT partitions, installed a new version of Windows, barebones then restored ONLY the Windows 10 C: drive partition from my MBR backup in Windows PE (leaving the newly created GPT system partitions alone) and its worked like a dream. If you have a GPT drive, then none of that backup and restore is needed. However i suspect a lot of old installs are MBR. I've not had a single issue (apart from the 3 bad boards, two of which were due to the BIOS updates on the all mentioned above)

It really is soooooooooooo much nicer to not have to re-install everything.. Especially if you have a complex build like i have. I think upgrading hardware from here onwards will be so much easier for everyone.

wolfie138 · 16 Sep 2020 at 08:08

wow, thanks for the info, thedoc46. That's really cool, certainly makes updating/new builds a lot more friendly. be half considering getting a new mobo because of some issues i have but have been shying away due to the reinstall issue. honestly don't know what my install is, MBR or GPT, i put W7 on 5 years ago then got the free update to W10, but it all still sounds a lot less stressful that having to do the full backup and reinstall route.

funny you mention BIOS stuff, i am loathe to mess w/ them given how easily you can brick a system, though some of them are a lot more user-friendly now and almost like a Windows environment, but in an attempt to solve an issue i finally got the latest non-beta BIOS file from the maker's site, got all set up, took a deep breath, put the USB in...and it says it's not a valid BIOS file :-| Tried twice, made sure the file unzipped correctly, the USB was a FAT32 etc, both times, no go. so i gave up, lol.

bimbleuk · 16 Sep 2020 at 08:24

I've built 4 systems in the last couple of weeks with only 1 minor issue see below. R5 3600, R7 3700X, R9 3900X & i7 5280K.

The last two were mine as I upgraded and re-built the i7 5280K in a spare case. Only thing I fundamentally did different is build each system bare bones on a mobo box to verify the parts were working. In each case Win10 was a new install.

Only issue I had was my R9 3900X ran fine on the mobo box but needed a BIOS reset when built in the case. Cases do weird things to new system parts, not sure why maybe earthing or something but it's happened too many times to ignore it.

thedoc46 · 16 Sep 2020 at 12:26

wolfie138 said:
wow, thanks for the info, thedoc46. That's really cool, certainly makes updating/new builds a lot more friendly. be half considering getting a new mobo because of some issues i have but have been shying away due to the reinstall issue. honestly don't know what my install is, MBR or GPT, i put W7 on 5 years ago then got the free update to W10, but it all still sounds a lot less stressful that having to do the full backup and reinstall route.

funny you mention BIOS stuff, i am loathe to mess w/ them given how easily you can brick a system, though some of them are a lot more user-friendly now and almost like a Windows environment, but in an attempt to solve an issue i finally got the latest non-beta BIOS file from the maker's site, got all set up, took a deep breath, put the USB in...and it says it's not a valid BIOS file :-| Tried twice, made sure the file unzipped correctly, the USB was a FAT32 etc, both times, no go. so i gave up, lol.

To find out if you have a GPT or MBR partition, go into disk management. Then on the LEFT side, where you see Disk 0, or Disk 1 etc.. right click and select properties, then under the volumes tab. It'll tell you there. I'm going to guess if you're coming from a Win7 upgrade that you're not GPT. Might be worth converting now. It'll save you a job later down the road.. Do a Macrium image of the entire C drive. (all partitions) So you have something to fall back on, should you have too. There are a couple of ways i know of, to convert to GPT. Either using DISKPART (google for everything you need) or disable CSM in the BIOS and do a 'fresh' barebones install of Win10, where it'll prompt you / give options to delete and create new partitions. With CSM disabled, it will create GPT.. Re-install Windows from the installation media. It can be downloaded for free if you don't have it. Once you have a barebones Win10 installed. Just install Macrium over it, and take your previously backed up image, and take ONLY the partition that had windows (uncheck all the old MBR recovery partitions) so you're only restoring the partition with Windows installed, (very important that part, otherwise you'll re-convert back to MBR) and Macrium will automatically boot you into a Windows PE enviroment, where the restore will happen. After the restore you'll get your Windows back to as it was and you'll be be on a GPT partition.

With a GPT partitioned boot drive, and with how all modern day mobo's come out the box, you can just throw it in the next time you switch out to a new mobo. Pour a bourbon, sit back and say cheers to all the time you've just saved.

wolfie138 · 16 Sep 2020 at 15:46

thank you very much for the info/advice :-)

pp111 · 16 Sep 2020 at 17:29

I hate it when something like that happens. I just throw money at the problem until it goes away, lol.

wolfie138 · 17 Sep 2020 at 15:24

had a bit google of this, and i'm confused. went to the first link i came to
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...management/change-an-mbr-disk-into-a-gpt-disk
and in Disk Management, when i click on my OS disk [i have one just for the OS] it says it's MBR and if i right click it only says "convert to dynamic disk", no GPT option. if i go to my other drives, which i use for data etc, they show as GPT partition style.