[SOLVED] Please help --- No warning board failure ? CPU, RAM or PSU ?

May 10, 2021
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Hello everyone i am new to this particular forum as i have never found myself in a state of angst <<Edited by moderator>>? i have always figured out or diagnosed machines but i have finally come to a crossroad where i am ready to throw my hands up and say finito! i am hoping someone here has had a similar problem and resolved it.

So i have a machine that is a few years old and instead of retiring it and moving on to a new machine i concluded that i could still make it competitive to a degree. the system started with an intel mainboard with the h67 chipset and a socket 1155 2nd gen i3 onboard graphics and 4 gb of ddr3 @1333mhz. and some off brand psu that was rated at 550w.

So i purchcased a 2nd gen i5 2500k , 16gb (4x4) 1333 mhz ddr3 , thermal take 700 watt psu , i dug up my old nvidia tesla c2050 w/ 3gb ddr5 fermi gpu w/ cuda core graphics card , a coolermaster aio liquid cooling unit , and a nzxt mid atx case. i threw it together when all the parts arrived MINUS the thermaltake psu bc it was still going to be another week before it arrived and MINUS the Nvidia Graphics card bc the stock psu couldnt push it.

So i installed a yet older pci x xfx 1g raedon card. all in all the unit perform well in this configuration but didnt have the frame rate i was looking for under gaming with all the settings at the lowest possible settings. im talking like the best i saw was 38 - 48 fps on world of tanks and sub 20's for world of warships , it wouldnt even launch raceroom. i continued to use this config for the next week on world of tanks until my psu arrived. so the day came i installed all of it boot the system fine tune the cpu and the graphics card i launch the same games and i am blown away at the performance of this machine i was actually in awe of how well it was performing! 100 plus fps for both world of tanks at max graphics settings in 720 and 70 -80 fps @ 1080 raceroom at max was 65-70fps these results were more than satisfying .

So after a long night of gaming i noticed the fans laboring and checked the system temps and all is well until i look at the gpu temp 88 degrees c! holy crap TDP is 90 in which i saw it go to 91 a couple of times. this worried me so after doing some research i discover that 88 is slightly higher than normal operating temp for this card and i blow it off.

A couple days go by i come in one evening fire up the pc and start playing 3 or 4 hours go by and im in the middle of a race and my machine freezes up . i try alt tab , 3 finger salute , i try forcing the machine to standby , i try everything i even let the machine sit for 3 to 5 min thinking maybe the machine was focused on lowering the temp and it would stabilize once it reached a safe temp . after a total of about 15 min i force the machine to shutdown by holding down the power button for 10 sec. i give it 5 or 10 min and turn it back on and Nothing. i get power but video , i remove the nvidia card and try using the on board video and NOTHING, i try the xfx card NOTHING, so at this point i am thinking its gotta be the power supply after all the nvidia card pulls roughly 240 - 290 watts alone so maybe it was too much for it .

I purchase a new power supply the following day corsair fully modular 800 watt power supply . i complete the swap and same result NOTHING no video . at this point i get curious about other potential issues like is the mainboard shot or is the mem bad . so i test the mainboard by removing all the ram and powering up the pc and NOTHING no bios beeps no warning alarms nothing. i insert one stick of ram and repeat the process and nothing i manually reset the bios and tried all the above and NOTHING. SO i moved to i guess the board is toast .

I purchase a asus p8h67 m pro for 30 bucks and nothing. . but the trouble is i returned the new power supply bc it was 120 bucks and if didnt fix the problem then i get the money back and spend it on new board whatever. so when the new board was installed i used the thermaltake power supply.
guys i only have 2 other options to change out before this is a brand new machine all around im not trying to do that i have already spent to much money to just walk away from it i could have build a newer unit for far less .

I did however finally decide to put a multimeter on the power supply .. im only getting 11 volts at the 24 pin main supply and 11 volts at the other 12v pins. but in my experience most machines will still function in a reduced performance state . i have never encountered a problem like this . i know it could be the memory and lastly the cpu but i am praying that isnt the issue. i dont have another machine to put the cpu in to test it and i know of no other way

ANY HELP WOULD BE FANTASTIC AND MOST APPRECIATED . IM SORRY ABOUT THE LONG POST BUT I KNOW THAT DETAILS ARE CRUCIAL WHEN IT COMES TO COMPUTERS i just wanted to be as detailed as possible.
 
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Solution
UPDATE: ok so i tried booting the machine again with the one stick config and the system came on and stayed running . i had no devices connected though no keyboard , no mouse no monitor . ( i didnt see the immediate need for the monitor bc the system would always restart soon as the hdd spins up . so i wouldnt ever see video anyway bc it restarts before it displays anything ) the system stayed running for about 60 secs before i powered off the unit. i powered it on again just to see and it still stayed running . so i shut down and dropped another stick of ram in now i have one in 1 and one in 3 , powered the unit back up and bam boot loop again . removed the last mem stick i put in and put it right back to the way it was a few min...
May 10, 2021
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always include your complete system specs whenever asking about system hardware.

if you are getting zero response from the system, than you will need a secondary working system to test the individual components.
Ok and another thing i forgot to mention, the pc is now in a bootloop sequence , power on hard drives spin up , fans spin up 3 sec in restart , it goes on for ever if i let it. And the other thing is the cooling block at the cpu is now makin a very faint but audible ticking sound it has never done that b4
 
Ok and another thing i forgot to mention, the pc is now in a bootloop sequence , power on hard drives spin up , fans spin up 3 sec in restart , it goes on for ever if i let it. And the other thing is the cooling block at the cpu is now makin a very faint but audible ticking sound it has never done that b4
The cpu fan clipping the heatsink is probably inconsequential, but remounting the fan onto the heatsink would not be a bad idea if the fan is removeable. With bootloops I tend to look at RAM first. I would take out all the sticks and put 1 in on slot 2 from the CPU socket and see what happens on reboot.
 
May 10, 2021
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Ok , im gonna give that a try i will even go through each stick of ram individually . I am picking up yet another new psu in an hour so i will probablly wait until then and do it all at the sametime. Thanks guys
 
May 10, 2021
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ok i wasnt able to pickup the psu before bestbuy closed but i did try moving the ram sticks around in all the sockets one by one and NADDA no joy. as i ssaid before i am pretty experienced and have done just about every thing i can think of thanks for that last solution i didnt try that one . So i am still at square one . i am leaning more towards thermal issue. one of the first things i actually assumed because the way the system hung up before this issue started. And not to mention the pattern that is left on the bottom of the heatsink block or cooling block . the ihs has a spot that it seems isnt making contact with cooler. not a good one anyway. any other suggestions ?? i read a couple this evening on another forum that said something about the power header pins and the power button cable being connected backwards was causing an identical issue. though i doubt that is my problem bc the only header pin i have connected atm is the power button. anytime i reassm a unit i always only plug in just the power one bc if u hook all of them up and one is backwards the unit will either bootloop or not power on at all. its just easier for me i guess , less can go wrong . when i see everything and sound and operating as it should i then reconnect all the headers.
 
May 10, 2021
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ok i wasnt able to pickup the psu before bestbuy closed but i did try moving the ram sticks around in all the sockets one by one and NADDA no joy. as i ssaid before i am pretty experienced and have done just about every thing i can think of thanks for that last solution i didnt try that one . So i am still at square one . i am leaning more towards thermal issue. one of the first things i actually assumed because the way the system hung up before this issue started. And not to mention the pattern that is left on the bottom of the heatsink block or cooling block . the ihs has a spot that it seems isnt making contact with cooler. not a good one anyway. any other suggestions ?? i read a couple this evening on another forum that said something about the power header pins and the power button cable being connected backwards was causing an identical issue. though i doubt that is my problem bc the only header pin i have connected atm is the power button. anytime i reassm a unit i always only plug in just the power one bc if u hook all of them up and one is backwards the unit will either bootloop or not power on at all. its just easier for me i guess , less can go wrong . when i see everything and sound and operating as it should i then reconnect all the headers.
UPDATE: ok so i tried booting the machine again with the one stick config and the system came on and stayed running . i had no devices connected though no keyboard , no mouse no monitor . ( i didnt see the immediate need for the monitor bc the system would always restart soon as the hdd spins up . so i wouldnt ever see video anyway bc it restarts before it displays anything ) the system stayed running for about 60 secs before i powered off the unit. i powered it on again just to see and it still stayed running . so i shut down and dropped another stick of ram in now i have one in 1 and one in 3 , powered the unit back up and bam boot loop again . removed the last mem stick i put in and put it right back to the way it was a few min prior when the system stayed on and BOOTLOOP all over again . it seems to me the pc is reaching max temp and restarting bc in my bios my setting are after power failure restart. what do u think guys?
 
UPDATE: ok so i tried booting the machine again with the one stick config and the system came on and stayed running . i had no devices connected though no keyboard , no mouse no monitor . ( i didnt see the immediate need for the monitor bc the system would always restart soon as the hdd spins up . so i wouldnt ever see video anyway bc it restarts before it displays anything ) the system stayed running for about 60 secs before i powered off the unit. i powered it on again just to see and it still stayed running . so i shut down and dropped another stick of ram in now i have one in 1 and one in 3 , powered the unit back up and bam boot loop again . removed the last mem stick i put in and put it right back to the way it was a few min prior when the system stayed on and BOOTLOOP all over again . it seems to me the pc is reaching max temp and restarting bc in my bios my setting are after power failure restart. what do u think guys?
Could definitely be a heat issue. I would clear CMOS to see if it resets that setting to shutdown when overheating and see if the behavior changes. If that occurs you have your answer, overheating. Of course you could try another application of the cooler and this time be very skeptical with how you are installing it to make sure it gets installed properly.

Through a process of elimination we know it cannot be the PSU. We know that the PC can boot up with minimum connectivity at least under certain circumstances. The next step is figuring out if it is overheating or not. If its not overheating we do more RAM testing. If that is not the issue we are most likely looking at something wrong with the mobo/cpu.

Just to be clear, when you have the system by itself and barebones (motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU) you do not have anything else connected correct? No HDDs or SSDs, soundcards, network adapters, et cetera, correct?
 
Solution
May 10, 2021
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PROBLEM SOLVED GUYS I FORGOT TO POST. IT WAS 2 RAM MODULES . 2 OF THE 4 ALMOST BRAND NEW STICKS TOOK A DUMP. I GOT CURIOUS AND WENT WITH A RAM CONFIG THE MANUFACTURER RECOMMENDED AND PROBLEM SOLVED.