[SOLVED] Asus Tuf B450M-Plus Gaming - - - HDD problem ?

[Phil McCavity]

I've inherited a working machine with an Asus Tuf B450M-Plus Gaming motherboard. It has a 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe M.2 SSD and 64GB DDR4 RAM. I upgraded the Ryzen 7 2700X to a Ryzen 7 5700X and that worked fine after updating the BIOS. It's happily running Windows 11.

Now I'm trying to add a 2TB HDD to it - one that works fine in another machine. With the drive connected it won't even spin up the fans. I changed the BIOS settings for the SATA ports to hot-swappable, and hot-swapping in a hard drive while it's running leads to an instant shutdown. After removing the HDD in both cases I have to disconnect the power and leave it for a few minutes before it'll start again. I'm not using SATA ports 5 or 6 as they clash with the M.2 port.

Does anyone have a thought about how I can get the HDD to work?

Thanks!

 

[rgd1101]

brand and model of the psu?

 

[Phil McCavity]

brand and model of the psu?

PSU is Corsair HX750, and the GPU is a GTX 1080

 

[Misgar]

Brand and model of the hard disk?

Although the drive works in another PC, the fault you've described sounds like the hard disk is grounding a DC power rail and the PSU's over-current trip has kicked in.

Normally, the only time I have power problems with hard disks is when they use pin 3 to control drive spin up. Your problem is far more severe.
https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Fix-the-33V-Pin-Issue-in-White-Label-Disks-/

Have you tried a different SATA data cable and a different SATA power connector?

Does the PC start up if you leave the SATA data cable disconnected?

 

[Phil McCavity]

I've tried different SATA and power cables but I must admit I haven't tried without a SATA cable. It's a 2TB Seagate ST2000VN000 NAS drive but the behaviour is the same with an old WD 80GB drive. I also tried a different 620 watt power supply (which seems to be faulty, but I don't have anything else bigger than abut 400 watts, so that's a dead end) and I've replaced the GTX 1080 with an old low power video card to reduce the load n the PSU just in case.

I checked the voltages coming out of the PSU and the 3.3 and 5 volt lines going to the SATA drives show a voltage briefly but it drops to zero as soon as I put the voltmeter on them. The motherboard connector voltages seem normal including the 3.3V and 5V lines.

It's 10.45 on a saturday night now so I might try a few more things in the morning including Misgar's suggestion. Thanks for the tips everyone!

 

[Misgar]

It's 10.45 on a saturday night now

Still Saturday afternoon here.

I checked the voltages coming out of the PSU and the 3.3 and 5 volt lines going to the SATA drives show a voltage briefly but it drops to zero as soon as I put the voltmeter on them. The motherboard connector voltages seem normal including the 3.3V and 5V lines.

What about the +12V rail?

Most 3.5" drives do not need the 3.3V rail, just 5V (logic) and 12V (motor). Most 2.5" laptop drives get by with only the 5V rail (12V not required).

Some people fix the pin 3 problem by using a Molex to SATA adapter, which doesn't include the 3.3V supply rail. These adapters are cheap and nasty and sometimes catch fire, but they're a simple way to test if the presence of 3.3V is causing the problem.

I don't have anything else bigger than abut 400 watts

After an initial switch on surge when the motor pulls up to 2A at 12V (see table 3 page 16 in Seagate spec sheet) the power consumption of your 2TB drive falls to around 4.8W operating, 3.95W idle, so a 400W PSU should be fine.
https://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/nas-fam/nas-hdd/en-us/docs/100724684.pdf

 

[Phil McCavity]

The plot thickens....

I switched the SATA power cable for one that only has earth, 5V and 12V (ie no 3.3V wire) and connected it to a working drive. Without the SATA cable connected the computer won't start.

I'm picking up some parts for a new customer build later today. Might be worth seeing if that PSU fixes the problem...

 

[Phil McCavity]

Problem solved!

I tried a brand new PSU. Everything works perfectly!

I would have eventually stumbled onto it but thanks to the help on here I got this sorted a whole lot quicker. So a big thank-you to Misgar for sticking with it. Cheers!!!

 

[SkyNetRising]

I tried a brand new PSU. Everything works perfectly!
I would have eventually stumbled onto it but thanks to the help on here I got this sorted a whole lot quicker.

Is your PSU modular?
Modular cables between different modular PSUs are generally not compatible.
Using wrong modular cables can damage/kill hardware connected.

 

[Phil McCavity]

It is modular, and the cables weren't from that individual PSU but were from the same product series (Corsair HX...). I did check and the voltages were seemingly correct.

 

[SkyNetRising]

It is modular, and the cables weren't from that individual PSU but were from the same product series (Corsair HX...).
I did check and the voltages were seemingly correct.

Mixup of cables is highly likely.
How confident are you, those cables were not from some different product series?

 

[Phil McCavity]

Mixup of cables is highly likely.

Certainly is!

How confident are you, those cables were not from some different product series?

I physically removed most of them from a Corsair HX620 (to put in the Corsair HX750). The 620 has a different plug to the 750 on the PSU for the SATA cables but I checked the voltages on all the cables before connecting anything and they were correct - that's when I found the voltages on the 3.3 and 5 volt SATA lines were dropping from their nominal voltages to zero almost instantly when I put the multimeter on them.

It's my suspicion that the HX750 was faulty all along but the problem only surfaced when I tried to connect a SATA HDD. Is it reasonable to think that the voltages on the SATA lines could be faulty while they're ok on the motherboard connectors?