Mobo seems to struggle to pull enough power to boot... Any ideas?

AyeAyeAhoy!

AyeAyeAhoy!

AyeAyeAhoy!

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Bit of an odd one this.

I have an MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR5 board which won't boot when you put too many components in.

If I just set it up as a basic machine - Mobo, CPU (i5-12500), PSU, RAM, NVME drive, then that's fine, no problems at all. However, I'm trying to get it going as a server, and with 4 HDDs added in, it fails to get going most times - takes about 5 goes for it to boot.

It's a bit like a car not starting. A light on the board lights up, then immediately fades down. Until on the 5th or 6th go, it successfully 'holds' and boots. Once it's running, it's golden.

If I add a 5th drive, then it won't start at all - that's too much.

I've tried it with a known good PSU from another machine and it's exactly the same thing.

Any ideas please?!
 
I remember old boards used to have a delay function which extended post by a few seconds, to give the drives time to initialise, but from what you describe that isn't the problem (because the light sounds more power related). Do you have fast boot turned on in the BIOS?
 
I do have fast boot enabled, so could try changing that. However, the system doesn't really get a chance for that to be a problem I don't think. It cuts it immediately.

I guess trying to start a chainsaw would be a more appropriate comparison - pulling the starter 3 or 4 times with it either failing or starting after each pull.
 
AyeAyeAhoy! said:
I guess trying to start a chainsaw would be a more appropriate comparison - pulling the starter 3 or 4 times with it either failing or starting after each pull.
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It doesn't make sense because the power for the SATA drives is drawn from the PSU and not the motherboard.

I can't think of any reason why the drives would increase load on the motherboard, unless they're somehow starving the motherboard of power by drawing too much power from one rail, or the chipset is being overloaded and needs more voltage.

Do you have a lot of stuff drawing power from that area of the board? RGB headers? USB headers? Fan headers? Though, I can't see why that would behave any differently with multiple hard drives.
 
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Tetras said:
Do you have a lot of stuff drawing power from that area of the board? RGB headers? USB headers? Fan headers? Though, I can't see why that would behave any differently with multiple hard drives.
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I don't have anything extra at all really - it's a really simple setup, no RGB at all.

I have another PSU arriving tomorrow, so I'm going to swap that in to see. I can't imagine it is the PSU as I've already changed it, but this just screams PSU issue.

Nice idea on whether too much is on the rail. I'll run another drive cable out. Although it's a 1000w high end PSU, running an i5, a few drives and a few fans... Not even a GPU! Shouldn't break a sweat
 
Here we go @Tetras, a quick video to show what's up;

PXL_20241126_202939006.TS.mp4

drive.google.com drive.google.com

This is with 4 drives in (the 5th isn't plugged in)

Different PSU hasn't changed anything unfortunately. I also dug out an old external power button, just in case it was a case problem, but that hasn't changed anything either
 
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tamzzy said:
bios reset to default?
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Had a look, but can't find a reset / default anywhere in the bios.

There's nothing funky looking in there though - no power management features turned on or anything like that.

Although if you have a look at the vid, it's so quick to fail, I'm not sure anything bios related has a chance to take effect.
 
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AyeAyeAhoy! said:
Although if you have a look at the vid, it's so quick to fail, I'm not sure anything bios related has a chance to take effect.
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ah yes, missed the post with the video lol. i had this happen before...not to my pc, but one that i was troubleshooting
it's probably/going to be a short circuit and/or a failing component shorting out, you'll have to go down the route of trying to isolate the faulty component
(in my case, it was the rgb controller)

the only other thing i can think off is that the number of HDDs is tripping the OCP, especially if your hdds cannot be set to staggered spin up
 
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Ok cool, thank you. I suspect you're right, and I also suspect the failing component is on the mobo unfortunately.

I'll try isolating out components. There aren't many of them! 3 fans, PCIE SSD & the hard drives
 
AyeAyeAhoy! said:
Here we go @Tetras, a quick video to show what's up;

PXL_20241126_202939006.TS.mp4

drive.google.com drive.google.com

This is with 4 drives in (the 5th isn't plugged in)

Different PSU hasn't changed anything unfortunately. I also dug out an old external power button, just in case it was a case problem, but that hasn't changed anything either
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Weirdddd. Does look like a power problem, or a short of some kind. Did you try running out another cable to spread the load on the rail?

Just to confirm, you're deffo using cables from the right PSU, right? No mix and matchers?
 
Tetras said:
Did you try running out another cable to spread the load on the rail?

Just to confirm, you're deffo using cables from the right PSU, right? No mix and matchers?
Click to expand...

Yes and yes. Ran the second SATA power cable from the PSU and put 2 of the drives on there, with 3 on the other. No change. And yep, not mixing cables. I've also tried a Corsair RM 850 PSU which is in my main PC (plus its cables) and all was the same.

mickyflinn said:
Take the hard drives out the case and test .
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Nice idea. Just pulled them, no dice unfortunately.

Also pulled the 3 fans (2 x case, 1 x CPU cooler) and the SSD - no change
 
Little update - spent this evening removing it all from the case and setting it up on the bench. Unfortunately everything is exactly the same as before, so that rules out the case and things generally shorting on it.

That leaves the CPU and Mobo. I can't see how this could be the CPU, as it's such a quick failure and once running it's fine.. unless anyone has any insight?

Which leaves the motherboard. Annoyingly, I can't see anything physically wrong with it, so don't know what could be broken. I think it's a throw-it-away job. Frustrating, as it's a nice board!
 
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Unfortunately not - I made the mistake of picking this up used, so I don’t have the original purchase receipt. MSI only do RMAs through the original retailer “for your convenience”, and not by serial.
 
In this order: Update the BIOS. Replace the CMOS battery. Then reseat the CPU. Run TestMem5 using the Anta 777 extreme preset to check the RAM.
 
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