Hello all, some quick advice needed from the wiser people out there.
I purchased an i7 2600k, asus p8p67 ws revolution, 16 gig (4x4) of corsair vengeance 1866 ram, corsair 1200ax psu and 3x EVGA gtx 580's.
The machine worked brilliantly for about 2 weeks then all of a sudden the monitor wouldn't come out of standby but the PC would still boot (could hear windows sounds, etc). I fiddled with the cable, no joy. I removed all but 1 of my graphics cards, still no joy. I replaced that graphics card and still no joy. I'd like to note that sometimes the machine booted fine and was 100% stable. At this point i just assumed it was a motherboard fault and purchased a replacement while sending the asus one back.
The new board was an Asrock Extreme7 Gen3. I installed it all with the exact same components and powered it on. I could smell an electrical "burning" smell so promptly powered down the pc and removed all the optional components (sound cards, graphics cards - resorting to the intel onboard). The machine posted no problem, i had a look around and powered off and installed the other components concluding that the electrical burning smell was actually just a "new" smell. Everything seemed fine and i installed windows. Upon rebooting i was prompted by the usual monitor off situation and at this point (probably far too late) i replaced the DVI cable.
Now i think this may just have been pure coincidence, but the machine booted. Great. However next time i came to power on the machine i got an Error code 45 and the machine refused to post. So i replaced all the RAM with some i had laying around. The machine posted. Next reboot, no post. So i removed all the graphics cards again. Still error code 45.
Now at this stage i'm pretty much dumbfounded. It can't be the RAM, it can't be all 3 of the graphics cards. Could it be that the replacement motherboard is faulty? I'm not so sure.
So i removed the CPU and inspected it. There is a slight, very slight discolouration on the back of the CPU (the pin side). about 6 of the golden pins are slightly darker towards the "top" side of the CPU. I wiped it gently with some cotton pads and it seemed to slightly brighten up the pins (could it be arctic silver on them? I find that hard to believe consider i don't even install the silver until the CPU is seated and then i follow the "vertical line" technique). I'm wondering if this has been the cause of my new issues and simply a faulty DVI cable caused me to replace the original motherboard.
Error code 45 is not described in the ASrock's motherboard manual. As the machine is so intermittent at booting do you think it could be a faulty CPU? I'm totally at a loss. Any help would be massively appreciated.
I purchased an i7 2600k, asus p8p67 ws revolution, 16 gig (4x4) of corsair vengeance 1866 ram, corsair 1200ax psu and 3x EVGA gtx 580's.
The machine worked brilliantly for about 2 weeks then all of a sudden the monitor wouldn't come out of standby but the PC would still boot (could hear windows sounds, etc). I fiddled with the cable, no joy. I removed all but 1 of my graphics cards, still no joy. I replaced that graphics card and still no joy. I'd like to note that sometimes the machine booted fine and was 100% stable. At this point i just assumed it was a motherboard fault and purchased a replacement while sending the asus one back.
The new board was an Asrock Extreme7 Gen3. I installed it all with the exact same components and powered it on. I could smell an electrical "burning" smell so promptly powered down the pc and removed all the optional components (sound cards, graphics cards - resorting to the intel onboard). The machine posted no problem, i had a look around and powered off and installed the other components concluding that the electrical burning smell was actually just a "new" smell. Everything seemed fine and i installed windows. Upon rebooting i was prompted by the usual monitor off situation and at this point (probably far too late) i replaced the DVI cable.
Now i think this may just have been pure coincidence, but the machine booted. Great. However next time i came to power on the machine i got an Error code 45 and the machine refused to post. So i replaced all the RAM with some i had laying around. The machine posted. Next reboot, no post. So i removed all the graphics cards again. Still error code 45.
Now at this stage i'm pretty much dumbfounded. It can't be the RAM, it can't be all 3 of the graphics cards. Could it be that the replacement motherboard is faulty? I'm not so sure.
So i removed the CPU and inspected it. There is a slight, very slight discolouration on the back of the CPU (the pin side). about 6 of the golden pins are slightly darker towards the "top" side of the CPU. I wiped it gently with some cotton pads and it seemed to slightly brighten up the pins (could it be arctic silver on them? I find that hard to believe consider i don't even install the silver until the CPU is seated and then i follow the "vertical line" technique). I'm wondering if this has been the cause of my new issues and simply a faulty DVI cable caused me to replace the original motherboard.
Error code 45 is not described in the ASrock's motherboard manual. As the machine is so intermittent at booting do you think it could be a faulty CPU? I'm totally at a loss. Any help would be massively appreciated.
