Help me Pl0x

Silverwing

Honorable
Sep 10, 2013
8
0
10,510
Okay so i recently build a pc started up fine when we first booted it up, then we changed something in the bio (something about a USB) and then it would sometimes detect the keyboard and monitor and other times it wouldnt, sometimes it would infinitely reset. We reset the RTC RAM and it was working fine, booted it up twice. Yesterday I went to install an OS from the USB drive, I forgot to change the Boot priority or whatever to load the usb drives first. I plugged the flash drive in where it said to insert boot media then reset the computer. Now it is doing the same thing as before. So should I reset the RTC RAM again? Is this a hardware issue? Is it the heat? (like 90F in my room).

Info:
Got the iso and followed instructions here: http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/xd44g

Specs:
Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
Asus P8Z77-V LK ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
MSI GeForce GTX 660 2GB Video Card
SeaSonic S12II 620W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
 
Solution


I'd take out everything you don't need, such as the GPU and use only one stick of ram. See if it freezes then. If so I would then either check the bios settings for various things and see if they are correct. (ram frequencies, cpu...
You have USB set as your first boot device, correct? Assuming yes it should work. It might not work if you didn't setup the USB drive correctly though.

Also its hooked directly into one the mobo ports and not say an add in USB card right?
 


I had forgotten to set the USB as my first boot device so I booted it up, put the usb in and now there is problems like it resets sometimes and if it doesnt it usually freezes up at some point in which I have to power it down my self. yes its plugged into the MOBO and not the expanders. I had forgotten to mention in my post that I called ASUS support and I followed what they said and I did get to the windows installer and it said something about drivers and in a minute or two the pc shutdown again. I tried it again and the monitor said windows is preparing setup or something like that and froze 3/4ths through forcing me to turn off the comp.
 


Well the problem isnt the USB its the fact that the comp is freezing at bios and restarting .
 


Freezing at bios or freezing after it gets into whats on the USB drive? If it freezes at bios, a bios reset might help. A bios update might also help.

 


Freezing at bios and other places. I got to the windows install setup once and it shut down like before it even bagan installing the OS.
 


I'd take out everything you don't need, such as the GPU and use only one stick of ram. See if it freezes then. If so I would then either check the bios settings for various things and see if they are correct. (ram frequencies, cpu voltage, etc) Are there any bios updates? (Note, DO NOT try to install any until we get the freezing issue fixed, if your pc shuts down in the middle of a bios update you have bricked it and usually the manufacturer won't replace it)

Do you have a known good PSU? Even if its a low wattage one? We only need enough power to run the cpu/ram/mobo/hdd. All of which use less than 100w combined with your setup.

If you go through all that and it still doesn't work and it still freezes up with the other PSU I suggest RMAing that mobo.

It could also be a faulty stick of ram causing the reboots so try alternating the stick one stick at a time in various slots. Normally I'd suggest running memtest but if you can't get the system stable then that won't do you alot of good. Alternatively if you have someone with a pc that uses DDR3 ram you can ask them to help you out and just run memtest with your ram on there machine overnight.

That won't rule out the ram 100% because it could be a compatibility problem with the ram and that mobo but you generally won't see that.

But honestly I'm leaning hard towards the PSU or the mobo, ram usually doesn't cause extreme crashes like that unless its just completely broken.
 
Solution


Hmm, I will see if it is the RAM. One question, The fans are plugged into the PSU via molex because I have a fan controller, if it was the psu wouldnt the fans stop turning?
 
If it was the powersupply the fans should stop spinning. This is assuming the power supply completely shuts down (as it should if anything is wrong with it) That includes the fan thats inside the PSU.

I'm leaning more towards a mobo issue. Ram doesn't seem very likely but I'd check it anyways just to be safe.
 


OKay so, I unplugged the gpu and plugged the monitor in the vga on the mobo and very time i start it up the monitor displays flashing lines and such regardless of which ram stick i have in it. The keyboard is also unresponsive which means it did freeze I guess. It isnt the monitor because it worked with my laptop.
 


Yup that pretty much confirms it. The mobo is dying. Well technically the proc might also be the problem but I've never ever seen one die (though I haven't been in this business super long so..)
 

Whats a proc?
 


Ah sorry, its just short for processor/cpu.
 


Btw in all the times that we tried to diagnose the problem we cleared the CMOS a couple of times and it worked fine for the first setup but then started messing up on all the times after that such as freezing on "save and restart" and/or infi reseting forcing us to reset in again.