My son has had a 3.5 year old Socket-1150 Asrock B85M Pro4 (just a bit out of warranty I guess), coupled with a i5-4590k (IIRC) and a single G.Skill 8Gb RAM stick. In the last 3-4 weeks, the system started bluescreening and some days ago would not start at all. Had some time to check it: removed the board from the PC altogether, resetted the BIOS, checked the RTC battery (~3 V). I also tried a different modular PSU I had, with the same result.
I borrowed an 1150 motherboard and removed the mem stick, CPU and (the stock) fan from the old board. Noticed that there was lack of paste, perhaps evaporated from use. Cleaned both of them, applied new paste and installed them on the borrowed board. I managed to enter the bios without a hitch, definitely good news.
Then I disassembled the RAM/CPU/fan and moved them back to the (probably faulty, at this point) motherboard. Tried to start the board up expecting that it wouldn't start at all, however to my astonishment, the fan started rotating! The very first time it did, the fan stopped and started up. There was some signal from the onboard VGA, since the monitor lit up momentarily, but then it went to standby.
There should be a led on the motherboard to indicate operation, but nothing lights up and I was not able to locate anything relevant with the user manual at http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Manual/B85M Pro4.pdf
Furthermore, I installed a small speaker on the respective board pins, but it did not produce any sound at all (could be that the speaker is dead). I also replaced the 8Gb RAM stick with a Kingston HyperX and tried moving things to different slots.
One final note is that installing an ethernet cable, makes the port activity LED flash, but the one indicating speed is off (which, according to the manual, indicates that the negotiated speed is 10Mbps). Corrupt UEFI? If so, some way to flash a new one, using some sort of recovery procedure?
One one hand I'm glad that the CPU (which is definitely more expensive than the board) is ok. OTOH, it makes me crazy that I've managed to come so far, I'd definitely love to make the board work... Any help would be appreciated!
I borrowed an 1150 motherboard and removed the mem stick, CPU and (the stock) fan from the old board. Noticed that there was lack of paste, perhaps evaporated from use. Cleaned both of them, applied new paste and installed them on the borrowed board. I managed to enter the bios without a hitch, definitely good news.
Then I disassembled the RAM/CPU/fan and moved them back to the (probably faulty, at this point) motherboard. Tried to start the board up expecting that it wouldn't start at all, however to my astonishment, the fan started rotating! The very first time it did, the fan stopped and started up. There was some signal from the onboard VGA, since the monitor lit up momentarily, but then it went to standby.
There should be a led on the motherboard to indicate operation, but nothing lights up and I was not able to locate anything relevant with the user manual at http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Manual/B85M Pro4.pdf
Furthermore, I installed a small speaker on the respective board pins, but it did not produce any sound at all (could be that the speaker is dead). I also replaced the 8Gb RAM stick with a Kingston HyperX and tried moving things to different slots.
One final note is that installing an ethernet cable, makes the port activity LED flash, but the one indicating speed is off (which, according to the manual, indicates that the negotiated speed is 10Mbps). Corrupt UEFI? If so, some way to flash a new one, using some sort of recovery procedure?
One one hand I'm glad that the CPU (which is definitely more expensive than the board) is ok. OTOH, it makes me crazy that I've managed to come so far, I'd definitely love to make the board work... Any help would be appreciated!
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). Or perhaps buy a Ryzen 1600/B350 combo for 150 euros (see 
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