No POST, liquid cooling pump not spinning, system fans and lights ARE on

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artoodeeto2

Honorable
Nov 3, 2013
21
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10,510
Specs:
Gigabyte GA970ud3 mb
AMD FX8350 (liquid cooled w/Laing ddc 3.25 pump)
Kingston hyperx blu ram, 16gb (I think)
Nvidia gtx 1060(not liquid cooled), just updated to driver 399.24
Samsung 850 ssd and 2.5” hd
Sound blaster z
Dual 24” lcds, 1920x1080 each. One hooked up via hdmi, the other via a DisplayPort-to-hdmi adapter cable (the gtx 1060 has 3 DisplayPort plugs but only one hdmi; the monitors only have hdmi and dvi inputs)
Windows 10 w/all updates
750w rosewill modular PSU

I should start by saying I haven’t made any hardware changes in my system for at least a year. It’s been working perfectly up until yesterday.

Something in my system died last night and I need help figuring out the most likely culprit. A few days ago I was working on my company laptop, using my dual screens (the laptop is hooked up to them via their dvi plugs). My desktop was on but b/c I had my screens set to the dvi inputs from the laptop I couldn’t see what happened on the desktop. I’d left a couple tabs of Google Chrome open in the desktop, not downloading anything or playing videos, just left web pages up. Otherwise the system was idling.

Out of nowhere, it rebooted. The lights dimmed, the fans spun down for a split second, almost like a power outage (but nothing else in the house turned off), and it made its usual startup noises. I immediately switched my screens to their hdmi inputs to see what was going on. My desktop showed its POST screen, but then restarted again. This time it got further, to the light blue windows logo screen, then restarted again. I then held the power button in while the POST screen was up until the system shut off. I waited a few minutes, turned it on, and got a normal startup. Even played Far Cry 3 for awhile (I’m a bit behind on those). System seemed completely fine for a couple days. I backed up my data just in case :)

Fast forward to last night. I’d had the system on for maybe 10 minutes, had had a browser open but closed it. Otherwise it was idling. I noticed the liquid cooling pump had really spun up so I opened the task manager. A background process was running and using 12-20% cpu. I’m blanking now on what it was. Something in Windows, module installer worker maybe? Anyway, after a few seconds of considering force-quitting that process, the system froze. Mouse cursor stopped moving. A few more seconds and it rebooted (on its own).

This time it showed the POST screen, and then my monitors went blank and showed the ‘no signal’ error message. Each time I’ve tried restarting the system, the lights turn on, the system fans turn on, but that’s it. The monitors have no signal, there’s no POST, and the liquid cooling pump, as far as what I can hear, is not spinning when plugged into the CPU fan header.

Happily, my wife’s computer is nearly identical to mine, so I have parts I can swap out for testing. Our video cards are 100% identical. I switched those last night and confirmed the issue is NOT the GPU. My card works perfectly fine in her system, while my system acts no differently with her card.

I also confirmed my liquid cooling pump works by plugging it into a system fan header instead of the cpu fan header. It spun right up when I powered the system on. But when it’s plugged into the CPU header, which adjusts fan speed based on temp., it does not spun up. This tells me my cpu is not doing anything.

What I’m wondering is, in order of what I think is likeliest:
- could my motherboard have died?
- could the cpu have died?
- does it sound like a power supply issue? When I’ve had a power supply fail in the past the system would just shut off or reboot with zero warning. In this case it froze and rebooted, so I don’t really think it’s my power supply.
- could the cpu fan header have stopped working, causing the cpu to overheat and die? I would think in an overheat scenario it would have shut off rather than froze and rebooted. And a few days ago when it started rebooting I did check the CPU temp in the BIOS and it was 37-39C.
- could it be the RAM?

I thought I’d get some feedback from others before tearing apart my wife’s computer to test mine. The video card and liquid cooling pump are all I’ve tested so far. I’ll add more as I test other things.

Thanks!
 
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A

artoodeeto2

Honorable
Nov 3, 2013
21
0
10,510
Forgot to mention - I did read through the no POST sticky, but that’s mainly geared towards a new build, whereas mine hasn’t had hardware changes in a long while and it’s been working fine.
 
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A

artoodeeto2

Honorable
Nov 3, 2013
21
0
10,510
Thanks for the suggestion. I did as you said, and the pump is spinning when hooked up to the case fan header. The case fan IS spinning when hooked up to the CPU fan header. But...still no signal to the monitors. It just sits there with the lights in and the fans running. So I can’t get into BIOS at all to check anything.
 
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A

artoodeeto2

Honorable
Nov 3, 2013
21
0
10,510
I’ve now tried:
Different PSU
Running on 2 sticks of RAM (dual channel and I have 4 total)
Running on 2 sticks of RAM in the other 2 slots
Running on 1 stick of RAM
Different video card
Video card in secondary slot instead of primary
Removing sound card
I have two hard drives - tried running with one then the other unplugged

None of these changes has made a difference. Fans run, lights on, but no signal to the screen. Holding the power button for 5 seconds does shut it off, so I don’t know if that indicates the motherboard is still ok?

Still left to try -
Swapping out the CPU/RAM with the ones from my wife’s computer (she’s got a 6 core AM3+ cpu so it’ll work in my mb). I need to go buy more thermal paste before doing this.
New motherboard
 
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A

artoodeeto2

Honorable
Nov 3, 2013
21
0
10,510
I’ve now tried switching the cpu and 2 sticks ram with the ones from my wife’s computer. Same results - fans, lights on, no signal to monitors.

Must be the motherboard as it’s literally the only thing I haven’t unplugged or swapped out, so I’ll be ordering a new one.
 
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A

artoodeeto2

Honorable
Nov 3, 2013
21
0
10,510
Yeah, that was one of the first things I looked for - I use a dark purple UV sensitive coolant that’s pretty easy to see if it’s leaked. Everything’s clean. (I did have a leak once, years ago, on a different motherboard. Fried two RAM chips since it happened while the system was on, and the system froze briefly before shutting off. But that motherboard was fine.)

My current motherboard’s about 5 years old, and I think it just died. Visually there’s nothing wrong with it and the cpu appears to be fine.
 
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A

artoodeeto2

Honorable
Nov 3, 2013
21
0
10,510
Already did :)
My computer and my wife’s have identical gtx 1060s. I put mine in hers and hers in mine. My system still didn’t boot up, and hers is running perfectly fine with my gpu in it.
 
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A

artoodeeto2

Honorable
Nov 3, 2013
21
0
10,510
Yep, I pulled the PSU from my wife’s system and hooked it up to mine, with the same results. It’s gotta be the motherboard that’s the problem, it’s the only thing I haven’t replaced or unplugged yet.

In a way I’m kind of glad it was the motherboard. It’s always had this weird USB issue - when copying large files to or from my iPad, it would get partway through and then the whole USB system would crash. All the devices would disconnect and then reconnect as it restarted the USB ports. It was really weird, especially since it didn’t do that with a normal external hard drive. Just my iPad.
 
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