Problems at post

qball101 · 4 Mar 2014 at 22:07

So I bought the ReAct Gigabyte Z87 mobo bundle that contains the G1Sniper Z87 motherboard from overclockers and this arrived just over a week ago. I had some problems with the x16 PCIe slot and at post I was getting a long beep followed by 3 shorter beeps and no display. I switched over to the x8 slot which seemed to work fine and there were no beeps at post. Thinking it might be the fit of the board in the case I ordered some slightly longer motherboard standoffs from ebay which allowed a better fit for the card (Gigabyte 770GTX) and the 16x slot seems to work fine now.

However, I am still getting the beeps at post and I don’t get a logo screen at post either (come to think of it I got no logo screen on the 8x slot either could it be something to do with the on-board graphics?). Other than that everything seems fine. It boots into windows and the temps all seem normal. I’m not quite sure what’s going on to be honest on the one had the post stuff suggests a problem but once in windows there are no discernible problems.

Maybe I’ve done something wrong or I’m missing something obvious. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated. I’m loathed to return the board if I can help it but I don’t want some sort of serious problem to emerge at some point in the future.

Jasseh · 5 Mar 2014 at 00:47

Taken from Gigabyte forums:

The POST beeps indicate the following:
1 short: System boots successfully
2 short: CMOS setting error
1 long, 1 short: Memory or motherboard error
1 long, 2 short: Monitor or graphics card error
1 long, 3 short: Keyboard error
1 long, 9 short: BIOS ROM error
Continuous long beeps: Graphics card not inserted properly
Continuous short beeps: Power error

Source: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2248.0.html

wazza300 · 5 Mar 2014 at 01:09

make sure your running latest motherboard bios,then try and see if you get a post screen ect

qball101 · 5 Mar 2014 at 19:56

Thanks for the reply. I've tried different keyboard and no keyboard, makes no difference, still no splash screen. I read elsewhere that it could be because it's defaulting to the on-board graphics and to go into the bios and change the default. Only problem is there's no way into the bios that I can see, pressing Del at startup has no effect.

qball101 · 5 Mar 2014 at 20:29

Okay, just managed to connect a monitor into the on-board graphics and still no splash screen or access to bios. If I press End to access the flash utility I just get a black screen and it doesn't boot into windows. Bearing in mind if I have the GPU in slot 2 I get no beeps, I'm starting to think that someone at Overclockers has broken something during the build process. Thinking I'm just going to return it tomorrow unless anyone has a bright idea in the meantime.

qball101 · 22 Mar 2014 at 15:16

For closure's sake in case anyone is searching for a solution to the same issue I thought I should post what happened. I went through a load of different things with both Overclockers and Gigabyte support none of which worked.

Eventually the Gigabyte people said that it was either a GPU, PCIe slot or PSU issue and to try an eliminate those one by one as they couldn't replicate the issue using the same components (have to say here that I've been really impressed with Gigabyte's support which has been responsive and thorough) so I ordered a new GPU, fitted that and the problem went away.

I went for the Gigabyte 780 in the end which uses 2 x 8pin power leads where as the 770 used a 6 and an 8 pin so I suppose there's a chance that it was the PSU as I'm using one different cable / output socket for the power (I'm using a modular Coolermaster 850w PSU).

I examined the GPU closely and can see no obvious damage and it still seems weird to me that it worked absolutely perfectly once in Windows. Seems to have even puzzled the people at Gigabyte so am glad it finally got resolved and that I managed to find an flimsy excuse to upgrade to a 780 as part of the process.