Could the motherboard or CPU have gone?

Akagi

Akagi

Akagi

Caporegime
Joined
29 Jul 2011
Posts
37,076
Location
In acme's chair.
Hi there, my friends pre-build which he got from a competitor site has just become faulty two months outside of warranty (typical).

The issue with the system is that everything appears to power on, but no display is output.

Things I have tried:

Resetting BIOS/CMOS
Fitting a known-working GPU
Testing his GPU in a known-working machine (it worked fine)
Fitting known-working RAM
Testing his RAM in a known-working machine (it worked fine)
Fitting a known-working PSU

Things I haven't tried as of yet:

Fitting his CPU in my known-working AM3 board
Fitting a known-working CPU in his board
Testing his PSU in a known-working machine

The specs are as follows:

AMD Phenom II 955
Asus M4A87TD/USB3
2x 4GB Samsung 1600MHz DDR3
Sapphire HD6870 1GB
1TB Hitachi Deskstar
'600W' (actual 12v output = 504W) FSP Group (generic grey-box) PSU

The known-working parts I used to test:

1x 2GB Crucial 1066MHz DDR3
XFX HD5770 1GB
Sapphire HD5670
350W Jeantech (generic grey-box) PSU (with the HD5670 fitted, i'm not looking for trouble :p )

Other things to note:

He keeps the machine in a well ventilated, dry and relatively dust-free environment
He (says) that he did nothing to it to cause it to not work, and that he just went to turn it on one morning and nothing came up on the screen. (he isn't the kind of person to go poking around inside a PC so I believe him)
He said that when it was working, the mobo speaker would sound the usual single beep to signify that everything is working OK, nothing I have done to the PC has resulted in any sound from the mobo speaker, or my own spare mobo speaker which I fitted in the hope that it would sound some error codes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I could test the CPU in a different board and visa versa, but not for a day or two, so I thought I would ask for peoples opinions here first.

And don't worry, I have persuaded him to buy a new PSU once the machine is up and running again ;)
 
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FSP make a lot of the branded power supplies so your friend shouldn't need to buy a new one.

First thing to check would be the graphics options in the bios to make sure his graphics card has priority over the board's integrated graphics
 
Defconluke said:
FSP make a lot of the branded power supplies so your friend shouldn't need to buy a new one.

First thing to check would be the graphics options in the bios to make sure his graphics card has priority over the board's integrated graphics
Click to expand...

Can't get into the BIOS to do anything. There is no display output, and I dont think the machine is even posting. Also there is no integrated graphics chip. :p

As far as I can tell, FSP only make PSU's for companies that I don't even think you can buy from in the UK. Aurum, Everest, Epsilon, BlueStorm, Saga and Bestec are the only ones I can find.
 
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It sounds a lot like the mobo. Do you not have a speaker to run off the mobo header acme? You should do if you don't, as you tend to get all these fun troubleshooting jobs
 
honosuseri said:
It sounds a lot like the mobo. Do you not have a speaker to run off the mobo header acme? You should do if you don't, as you tend to get all these fun troubleshooting jobs
Click to expand...

There is already a speaker on the motherboard header, no beep codes can be heard. I also fitted one of my spare ones, and there were still no beep codes. :(

Could it be a corrupt BIOS? This board has a BIOS recovery feature meaning I can replace a corrupt BIOS by just plugging in a USB flash drive with the BIOS file on it. I suppose I could try that. I'm not sure how it would work though.
 
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honosuseri said:
Sounds like the mobo is toast. Sorry I didn't see you'd said about the speaker.....it's still early my eyes aren't fully open yet ;)
Click to expand...

Sounds a bit that way :( and that's fine haha, its not too early for me, I got up at midnight. My body clock is a weird and wonderful thing. :rolleyes:

I also added a bit more to my last post just as you replied to it :)
 
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honosuseri said:
CPU failure is pretty rare to be fair, unless he has been overclocking it and gone silly with the voltages.
Click to expand...

I did the overclock for him, it was stable at 3.8 on stock voltages. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have changed it.

Noobish question alert! :eek: If I put a faulty CPU in a working motherboard, or a working CPU in a faulty motherboard, could anything else get damaged as a result?
 
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I just thought I would share this enlightening sentence I found on another forum. "Press your computer's "Power" button. If it doesn't turn on, your motherboard may be broken." :rolleyes:
 
34hyooh.jpg


But yeh sounds like the mobo. I don't think putting swapping around the CPU or the mobo would cause any problems to other parts, it just simply wouldnt boot if it didnt work.
 
Moved all of the parts that were in his PC and my own AM3 motherboard into a spare case, the system is working fine now. Looks like it was the board after all.

I thought I would have to wait a while before I got a chance to do this, but I am free today all day now so I got it over with.

The pre-build company who built his computer must be fricking awful though. The CPU wasn't properly clamped in, two of the pins were kinked from where someone had tried to put it in and bent the pins then had to straighten them again, and there was so much thermal paste that it had glued the CPU to the cooler and over-spread onto the edge of the socket and the motherboard.
 
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