Problems, Problems and more Problems

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6 Feb 2012
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70
Location
Scotland
Hello everyone. I'm getting pretty fed up at this point and I'll explain to you why and hopefully some saint can help me out here.

A few weeks ago I purchased a new processor and motherboard (thread here, which states everything I have and the new motherboard and processor I have bought). When they arrived I installed everything and immediately came across a problem - my pc wasn't starting up at all. Just no power whatsoever. We first assumed it may be the power supply (even though it works perfectly fine in my original build) so we swapped the power supply and still nothing. We switched all of the front panel connections a dozen times and still nothing. So we took everything apart and put it back together again thinking we missed something obvious, but nope. Then we took my original motherboard, processor and power supply with 1 stick of ram and tested it - it worked fine, which was expected. Then we tested the new motherboard and processor with 1 stick of my original ram and my original power supply which was a no-go. So we assumed it was the motherboard and sent it back on RMA.

A few days later I get an email saying there's nothing wrong with the motherboard and they were sending it back. It said something in the email like "make sure you test another ram slot if it's not working". Ok, so I got it back and we decided to test the processor again. My dad has pretty much the same processor as me as well as a gigabyte motherboard, so they're very similar. We switched the processor's out - my new one into my dad's pc, which works totally fine. It would switch on (hurray! Progress!) but then restart itself after a few seconds later, over and over again. We thought it must be the processor then, since my dad's PC works perfectly fine otherwise. So we sent it back on RMA.

Again, a few days later I got an email saying they were sending it back to me and all it said was "posts fine". Now I was really confused.

Just last night we decided to try again. We put everything in and gave it a go, but the same thing was happening that happened to my dad's pc when we tried it in there - the pc starts, but the cpu fan does not, then a few seconds later the pc restarts itself. So we tried the cpu fan in a different slot and it worked, so we thought it was the cpu fan slot on the motherboard. However, we tried one of my Akasa fans in the cpu fan slot and it also works. In summary, the cpu fan does not work in the cpu fan slot but does work in another fan slot and a normal fan does work in the cpu fan slot.

We decided to test the ram, just to see. So we switched out my ram stick with one of my dad's and it booted up. Immediately we came to the conclusion that my ram and the motherboard were incompatible for some reason. However, after putting in the second stick of my dad's ram, it went back to starting for a few seconds and switching off again. Putting in 1 stick of my ram makes it work what seems to be randomly, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. Putting in 1 stick of my dad's ram it works most of the time. But putting more than 1 stick of ram and it just doesn't start at all. Not 2, not 4.

We're really confused at this point and don't know what to do. My boyfriend is going to phone overclockers later in the day to see if there's anything they can do to help. I thought I would ask the forums as well. Please help ;-;
 
Does sound like a motherboard problem which they didn't pick up. I would make a thread in the CS section and tell them about how 1 stick of RAM works fine but 2 sticks of tested working RAM causes it to have problems.
 
you could try with the borrowed stick of ur dads ram a bios update
& clear cmos too etc
think i agree with bacon all points to motherboard
 
Mate, you have to be sure your memory is in QVL. That list was needed mostly to Asus (top-level motherboard especially) users, but - as you can see on your own example - now it's important everywhere.

download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_ga-z77x-d3h.pdf

I presume you've got that motherboard, so follow that list and check with your memory. Older DDR3 sticks don't have to be compatible with newer i5 platform due to voltage and (lack of) XMP profiles, most likely.

In the meanwhile you can try to update BIOS to the newest revision, and set up manually (yes) memory settings, because some motherboards set up Auto settings not so properly as we may think.
 
So if my ram isn't on that list it means it's not compatible at all? Neither mine nor my dad's ram is on that list. We tried to change settings in the bios but we weren't sure what exactly we have to change.

I'm also still confused as to why the cpu doesn't work on my dad's pc either - unless the cpu is incompatible with the ram?
 
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So if my ram isn't on that list it means it's not compatible at all? Neither mine nor my dad's ram is on that list. We tried to change settings in the bios but we weren't sure what exactly we have to change.

I'm also still confused as to why the cpu doesn't work on my dad's pc either - unless the cpu is incompatible with the ram?

No, because it`s` virtually impossible for a mobo manufacturer to test every make and model of ram. The QVL is just a rough guide to ram compatibility.
Download the latest Bios update, unzip and copy bios.exe to a usb pendrive and use Qflash in the bios.
See if this solves the issue.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4144&dl=1#bios
 
My boyfriend has informed me that one of the pins is bent. I'm certain it wasn't like that before so it must've happened sometime last night when we were switching and swapping. I know that can cause a lot of problems, however I don't think it can be the sole problem of what's going on seeing as how it's been acting like this since I first recieved it from OC.

I will take a look at it when I get home and I will get the latest bios update installed and see how it goes.

EDIT: Just an update to say my PC is now working. We bent that pin back and it started working. It doesn't make much sense to me, because I've been having problems with it from the moment I got it which means the pin must've been bent from the beginning and OC didn't say anything when they receieved it... And how did they manage to get it to work when I couldn't? Anyway, it's working now, so that's all that matters I guess.
 
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