Asrock X399 Taichi dead

LePhuronn · 17 May 2022 at 16:27

This is a quick call to anybody with some advice.

Been asked to look at a dead system for a friend and the X399 Taichi looks like it's caput. When you connect up the power, the chipset heatsink's LED will come on and stay a static green. From videos I've seen, the LEDs should start cycling shortly after the board receives power (whether this is a BIOS setting or not I couldn't tell you). However, you hit the onboard power button, or jump the PWR_BTN headers and nothing happens.

Interestingly, it seems BIOS flashback still works. Given the sequence of events my friend told me which led to this system dying, it sounded like he could've been victim of some BIOS-killing malware. So I tried BIOS flashback with the latest BIOS and the LED displays appear to indicate the flash was successful, but still nowt happens when you hit the power button.

Tried empty RAM slots, a single DIMM in every channel (across all 4 DIMMs...that's a lot of permutations), known good DIMMs, new PSU, no CPU, nothing happens.

Reading around the interwebs, it appears this board is notorious for just giving up the ghost at any given point, and I've tried everything others have posted to diagnose and sort this.

So, before I proclaim to my friend his board has indeed gone to silicon heaven alongside all the calculators, does anybody have any last-ditch suggestions?

Many thanks

Rroff · 17 May 2022 at 16:35

Make sure CPU heatsink isn't overly tightened - even testing with no CPU doesn't necessarily eliminate potential for issues due to the board flexing.

LePhuronn · 17 May 2022 at 16:59

Cheers Rroff. I've tried from hand tight to sheer gravity and had no luck.

Not that I'm convinced the CPU cooler actually works either...remember those Enermax Threadripper AIOs that turned to gunk inside? Yeah, it's one of those, and I can't feel anything spinning or pumping.

Even if the CPU had died, I'd still expect the board to kick in somehow and display some diagnostic codes on the debug panel if the board was OK, but we just don't start up at all.

PDW · 21 May 2022 at 06:02

I have an X399M Taichi that only shows the blue LEDs cycling when running, the debug panel is blank.
Machine is only rebooted once or twice a year so haven't got a clue what the panel shows when first powered on.
Have you tried without the GPU in ?

LePhuronn · 21 May 2022 at 09:17

PDW said:
Have you tried without the GPU in?

I have yes, and with and without NVME drives too.

She ain't doing anything.

Journey · 21 May 2022 at 09:22

LePhuronn said:
I have yes, and with and without NVME drives too.

She ain't doing anything.

Assuming you are trying all this outside of the machine?

LePhuronn · 21 May 2022 at 09:23

Journey said:
Assuming you are trying all this outside of the machine?

Yessir

Journey · 21 May 2022 at 09:31

LePhuronn said:
Yessir

You could try a full board clean, front and back, time consuming but sometimes it works. You'll need a brush with very soft bristles, some cotton buds and 99% IPA, and lots of patience.

Also do you know the circumstances that caused it to stop working?

LePhuronn · 21 May 2022 at 09:41

Journey said:
Also do you know the circumstances that caused it to stop working?

Not really, only the sequence of events relayed to me by my friend who isn't a massive tech head.

Form what he says, everything was working fine, turned the machine on one day and it was fine. Now, he says that Google Chrome gave him a popup notification to perform an update, so he did. Halfway through the update the system bluescreened, rebooted as far as Windows logon. He didn't give reason or circumstance for turning the system off at this point, but from here it never powered on again.

Now given that Chrome doesn't give you actual popups for update notifications, my brain went to some kind of BIOS-trashing malware. As I said in the original post, BIOS Flashback seems to work (at least, the LED sequence described in the Asrock manual seems to do be correct) so I put the latest BIOS on, but I don't know if that's enough to fix a malware corruption (if that's even a thing these days).

Journey · 21 May 2022 at 09:48

LePhuronn said:
Not really, only the sequence of events relayed to me by my friend who isn't a massive tech head.

Form what he says, everything was working fine, turned the machine on one day and it was fine. Now, he says that Google Chrome gave him a popup notification to perform an update, so he did. Halfway through the update the system bluescreened, rebooted as far as Windows logon. He didn't give reason or circumstance for turning the system off at this point, but from here it never powered on again.

Now given that Chrome doesn't give you actual popups for update notifications, my brain went to some kind of BIOS-trashing malware. As I said in the original post, BIOS Flashback seems to work (at least, the LED sequence described in the Asrock manual seems to do be correct) and I put the latest BIOS on, but I don't know if that's enough to fix a malware corruption (if that's even a thing these days).

He'll be talking about the annoying button that pops up in the top corner that goes from green, to yellow, the red and slightly larger then eventually forces you to update for certain patches. If you don't turn off your system or close down Chrome that often you'll see it a lot, if you leave things open and don't run the machine off you'll see it a great deal.

LePhuronn · 21 May 2022 at 10:39

Journey said:
He'll be talking about the annoying button that pops up in the top corner that goes from green, to yellow, the red and slightly larger then eventually forces you to update for certain patches.

Knowing him he probably wouldn't notice that until it became really obvious.

Since I won't be doing the RAID recovery on this system this weekend, I'll give a board clean a go and see wha happens.

Cheers.