Asus P7P55D-E Deluxe not starting. Is it fixable?

[JoeBrave]

Recent second hand buy, worked fine at first but suddenly started to fail to start up the system. Stripped down the rig to narrow down the problem till I was only left the CPU, motherboard and PSU. It starts up for a second, CPU_LED lights up, a click is heard in the PSU as well as a squeaky noise (perhaps a condensator?).

Made a video of it: http://youtu.be/olXSjCMlVZw

You can also hear the water pump at first, that is why I unpluged it's connector.

 

[alexoiu]

What power supply? Can you borrow one and test? Can you install the stock CPU fan just for testing?

 

[JoeBrave]

It's a brand new 850W PSU. I tried the CPU on another board and it works, so my guess is that it is a faulty motherboard, not the CPU. I tried with and without RAM sticks, with only one stick in different slots, so it is not a memory issue. The thing is that my case hasn't got a speaker, so I don't know if there are any beeps. So:

PSU: OK!
CPU: OK!

I don't have a stock fan for the CPU, but it should work even without the fan connected to the CPU_FAN (no CPU_FAN POST message, but it started), or at least it did before when everything was working fine.

I checked for bent pins in the CPU socket but can't see anything with a naked eye. Don't know if I should bother searching for a magnifier to examine it more deeply, but the case is that it has been working fine for the last two days, until suddenly yesterday it freezed while the OS was loading. Since then it wont start.

My guess is that it is the mobo. This is just a desesperate call to see if it could have a non-expensive fix. I have a P7P55D motherboard with a faulty SATA controller, perhaps I could swap some part like the BIOS chip or something similar (crazy idea, perhaps?). I'm going nuts with this thing.

 

[alexoiu]

Swapping the BIOS chips would probably not work.
An option for the SATA controller could be a PCI SATA controller. Look for a compatible one.

 

[JoeBrave]

Swapping the BIOS chips would probably not work.
An option for the SATA controller could be a PCI SATA controller. Look for a compatible one.

That is a clever idea. The motherboard of this post is going to the recycle bin, there is no solution for it. I will try to save the mobo with the broken SATA. Lesson learnt, don't go cheap buying second hand electronic components with no warranty, at the end you pay for it.