990fxa-ud3 Hangs at motherboard splash screen

xanavi

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Dec 3, 2011
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18,510
I have a 990fxa-ud3 motherboard and upon boot up the system would hang at the Gigabyte splash screen. Pressing DEL key to access CMOS setup doesn't do anything. I've tried other key options as well to no avail. Simply put, it's locked up, frozen. LED's, fans, HDD, disk drives, is still on.

I have a suspicion that the north bridge chip gave out. The reason for this is because it has been running hot (too hot to touch) and right before it started to hang at splash screen, the system froze right after playing a game (Dirt 3). This was the last time I was able to successfully boot into windows. I noticed upon open the case that the nb heatsinks this time was SCALDING hot.

I was able to try a different set of memory, VGA, HDD, and PSU from a working computer with no difference in result. I have not tested the CPU since I have no other CPU to try that is compatible with the socket ( I have not tested the CPU if it is ok. It wouldn't talk to me.) I have also reset the CMOS.

Please help to verify if my suspicion is correct and any other troubleshooting help you can send my way. If anything, I can try and RMA the board to Gigabyte but I'd like to try everything out first before I call it quits. Thanks in advance.

System Specs:
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 v1.0 F2 Bios
AMD 955 BE OC'd 4.0ghz 1.45v (20x200 on multi)*
*too agressive OC could've killed my CPU?
Corsair H50 (never had temp problems)
G.skill Ripjaws X 1600
XFX 6850 CFX 875/1150
WD Caviar Blue 500GB
Corsair TX750 v2

*update I was able to get past Splash screen and into Post screen by removing HDD altogether (it would hang here if HDD is connected. All hardware are recognized and no error messages...). I was then able to get into BIOS using PS/2 connection with keyboard. Weird thing to note is that the USB, SATA ports, are not working. I cannot get the Disk drive to boot Slax or anything either. I have also down clocked cpu and voltages to stock.
 

clutchc

Titan
Ambassador
Actually, all those devices you mention that are not working are part of the SOUTH bridge. The one sitting lowest on the board, next to the PCIe slots. Is that the one that is scalding hot? If so, it might have had a bad thermal paste contact with the heat sync. If the system won't boot even after it cools, I'm thinking the chip set is dead now.
 

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