New Build/Upgrade help! I am doing something wrong. PC wont turn on!

[Corey Mousseau]

I am upgrading my PC with a new mobo, cpu, graphics card, and ram.

Mobo - ASROCK Extrem6
CPU - i5 4670k
Graphics Card - Radeon 7870xt
RAM - Crucial Ballistic Sport 16gb (8x2)

PSU, HDD, Optical Drive, and case (with fans) are all from my old PC.


I installed everything, and I believe it was all hooked up correctly.

I turn it on, nothing shows up on my monitor (monitor gives a no source message and goes to sleep).

I have done several trouble shooting steps, and followed this guide:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems


With everything plugged in, I press power and on the LED on the motherboard the following codes come up in sequence:

15, 4f, 9c, A2, 99

It does hang at A2 for a bit before going to 99. The LED will shut off completely after a few moments at 99. Nothing ever appears on the monitor.

From the manual 15, 4f, and 9c seems to be related to memory. A2 is a SATA device (HDD??), and 99 is PCI-E device (video card?).

So... here are my steps so far (none with any luck):

I DO NOT get any beeps when I just press power. BUT... I can spam f2 and get a beep and what sounds like a swoosh (splash screen for bios maybe?). I do not get anything on the monitor when I do this, but the LED goes to Ab and stays there. Because I cant see anything on the screen I am not certain I am at the BIOS. But I am able to press the up/down keys and it does make sounds as if I am cycling through a menu...


So, because of this I assume the PSU and Memory are good. So my first step in trouble shooting was disconnecting the Graphics card.

Now I boot up. Still nothing on monitor. I get similar codes, but this time it is 4f, 78, 9c, b2 (quickly), A2 (quickly), 99. It holds at 99 then LED shuts off.

I am still able to spam f2 and same thing happens, I think I am accessing bios, and I do hear a beep, nothing on monitor.


So, the next step I did was to try a different HDD. I have my original 750GB HDD from the PC prior to the upgrade. Nothing. I also purchased a 32 GB SSD with the intent to load Windows on that. Nothing there either. I tried with both of them connected, and either of them connected.


I tried reducing down to 1 stick of RAM. I placed the RAM in all four spots and tried. I did this with the Video card in, with it out, with the HDD in, with the SSD in. Basically every combination I could think of I tried.

I tried to attach the old video card instead. Nothing. I tried the old RAM (corsair 2GB). nothing.

I did not try spamming f2 everytime. But every time I did try it I was able to get the beep, splash swoosh, and nothing showed up on the monitor.


I probably should try the old Mobo with the new RAM and vid card to make sure they work, but I have not mustered up the nerver to unhook everything and try that yet.


I do not have a second PSU or monitor to trouble shoot with. BUT they both worked perfectly fine before I did any upgrades. The PSU is a 700W device and seems to be working fine (though I do not have a multimeter to check.) All fans and LED's appear to have power just fine. The fans on the graphics card spin, and everything appears to stay on when I am in the Bios (so I assume at least). Also, the fans spin the whole time that i have power on (though from what I understand this is expected).

Any thoughts? I would love to get this figured out

I may have missed somethings here, so let me know if I can provide more feedback (even though this is a book already).

 

[burdenbound]

Sounds like the motherboard, if you've tested the ram, hard drive, graphics card and it's still giving you the same issues it narrows it down. It does sound like your getting into the bios if your getting sounds when navigating around, it's possible the PCI slot on the board is broken which is preventing you from getting any display. I always find that the motherboard is the most finicky piece of hardware on new builds.

 

[Corey Mousseau]

Sounds like the motherboard, if you've tested the ram, hard drive, graphics card and it's still giving you the same issues it narrows it down. It does sound like your getting into the bios if your getting sounds when navigating around, it's possible the PCI slot on the board is broken which is preventing you from getting any display. I always find that the motherboard is the most finicky piece of hardware on new builds.

Before I go and issue a return on the motherboard I want to make sure that it is indeed the case. I decided to just do a complete redo. I took everything out of the case and reinstalled everything.

I did something, though I am not sure what nor am I confident it is good. Now when I turn it on the LED on the board reads 00 and does nothing else, it then restarts and repeats.

00 correlates with a CPU issue, the manual says to clear CMOS. I am not sure how to clear CMOS, and even if I did I would not be able to as there is no display.

Now I am worried that it is the CPU and not the Mobo... I do not have a different CPU or board to try to troubleshoot, so I am not sure what to do now.

Any thoughts here?

I did try my other PC's PSU to see if that did anything, but that was to no avail 🙁

 

[burdenbound]

You can clear the CMOS by using the physical jumper on the board, your motherboard manual should have information on it, or by removing the motherboard battery and placing it back in.

 

[jdrag]

I know you stated you tried it with another PSU but at what wattage? I myself run a 1000 wt because when I did exactly what you are doing now I found out my video card and cpu upgrades and extra hard drives alone put me over my old 650wt, couldn't even get it to turn on.

I'd suggest you test it with a higher wt PSU before you do anything else.

Simply put, logically you should be able to remove everything, unplug the hard drives, remove all ram sticks just remove everything, only have the PSU plugged into the motherboard and and if you have onboard video use that, attempt to boot and see what happens. It will obviously beep due to missing those parts but it should at least flash the bio screen or anything before going to "monitor sleep mode or displaying no connections"

 

[Corey Mousseau]

I was able to clear the CMOS.

I tries to boot like before. But this time it gets to debug 99 then hangs there, but stays there. Before it would try to reboot after a few moments. Also, I can press f2 at any moment while it is hanging at 99 and it goes to what appears to be the BIOS. But now when I press f2 I do not get a beep, in fact I get no beeps at all. I know it is reacting to f2 because I hear the splash swoop.


The PSU I tried was lower watts, 585W. I have been using a 700W. From what I read it was indicated that 700W would be plenty.

I unplugged everything from power.

I left the RAM in to the Mobo. Tried it, same results as before.

I took the RAM out. This time it immediately started beeping over and over again with an error of 53. So at least I think that is a good sign.

I do not understand what the error 99 means. The manual says "Problem related to PCI-E devices. Please re-install PCI-E devices or try installing them in other slots. If the problem still exists, please remove all PCI-E devices or try using another VGA card."

But I do not have anything plugged into the PCI slots?

I am at a loss with all of this

 

[Corey Mousseau]

After all of the trouble shooting I found the problem. Of course it was the most simple thing... The video output was not playing well with the DVI cables I was using. The whole time it was simply just the connection. I figured it out by hooking up my TV to the machine with HDMI and the display worked! The monitor I have works with a dvi-vga adapter.

This now leaves me with trying to figure out what I need to get to get my monitor to work with DVI. The VGA display is terrible.

My old setup used a DVI-D cable. The new setup has DVI-I female. I presume the DVI-I does not play right with the DVI-D.

So I looked into this. From what I can gather DVI-I is both digital and analog output. DVI-D is digital only. The odd thing is though, from what I have read, DVI-I should be able to connect to a DVI-D monitor.

Do I need to get an adapter? I found this one, and think it will work, but I wanted to make sure it was even necessary. It seems that a PC with video out that is digital/analog should be able to connect to a monitor that is digital only. Or do i have this backwards?

 

[jdrag]

After all of the trouble shooting I found the problem. Of course it was the most simple thing... The video output was not playing well with the DVI cables I was using. The whole time it was simply just the connection. I figured it out by hooking up my TV to the machine with HDMI and the display worked! The monitor I have works with a dvi-vga adapter.

This now leaves me with trying to figure out what I need to get to get my monitor to work with DVI. The VGA display is terrible.

My old setup used a DVI-D cable. The new setup has DVI-I female. I presume the DVI-I does not play right with the DVI-D.

So I looked into this. From what I can gather DVI-I is both digital and analog output. DVI-D is digital only. The odd thing is though, from what I have read, DVI-I should be able to connect to a DVI-D monitor.

Do I need to get an adapter? I found this one, and think it will work, but I wanted to make sure it was even necessary. It seems that a PC with video out that is digital/analog should be able to connect to a monitor that is digital only. Or do i have this backwards?

Good find, why dont you keep HDMI? Are you using something else for the HDMI? At my house I use an HDMI splitter I bought for about 50$ since my TV doesnt support duel HDMI, it works great I use it for my PS3 and my Computer, it also auto switches depending on what device has power so no manual switching of the splitter needs to be done, its nice.

 

[Corey Mousseau]

After all of the trouble shooting I found the problem. Of course it was the most simple thing... The video output was not playing well with the DVI cables I was using. The whole time it was simply just the connection. I figured it out by hooking up my TV to the machine with HDMI and the display worked! The monitor I have works with a dvi-vga adapter.

This now leaves me with trying to figure out what I need to get to get my monitor to work with DVI. The VGA display is terrible.

My old setup used a DVI-D cable. The new setup has DVI-I female. I presume the DVI-I does not play right with the DVI-D.

So I looked into this. From what I can gather DVI-I is both digital and analog output. DVI-D is digital only. The odd thing is though, from what I have read, DVI-I should be able to connect to a DVI-D monitor.

Do I need to get an adapter? I found this one, and think it will work, but I wanted to make sure it was even necessary. It seems that a PC with video out that is digital/analog should be able to connect to a monitor that is digital only. Or do i have this backwards?

Good find, why dont you keep HDMI? Are you using something else for the HDMI? At my house I use an HDMI splitter I bought for about 50$ since my TV doesnt support duel HDMI, it works great I use it for my PS3 and my Computer, it also auto switches depending on what device has power so no manual switching of the splitter needs to be done, its nice.

I would use HDMI but my monitor only takes DVI or VGA. I may pick up a new monitor at the end of summer, but I have to go with what I have got for now. I have two HDMI out and two DVI out, so for now I have no lack of ports!

 

[jdrag]

Ahh, well good luck

 

[mtoddvan]

What I would try would be to go from HDMI from vid card to Dvi of monitor, adapter is readily available & not expensive, plus this will get you setup for your next HDMI monitor or flat-screen. Hope this helps!
I was thinking it was a video incompatibility when I started reading your post, it is common between mobo video output & pcie cards to clash, I did not get as far as looking up your components to see rather since you found the cause, lol got a bad HDMI cable once as well & caused flickering off & on as well.