No point in continuing my previous thread on the CPU section.
It's a socket AM3 board (GA-MA785GT-UD3H rev. 1.0), which was in service for over five years until yesterday, when I received those Enermax case fans. Well, this is how it went down:
1. PC off (this means that the PSU cable is unplugged as well). Both fans set to medium speed (2500 RPM). Turned PC on. Sys_Fan 1 (frontal intake fan) is working on low speed (1500 RPM). PC off. Turned the switch to low speed (1500 RPM) on both fans. PC on. Sys_Fan 1 now turns at around 750 RPM. PC off.
2. Switched fan positions. 1500 RPM setting. Sys_Fan 1 now making my second fan work at a lower speed. So, the fans aren't faulty, good to know.
3. Restart, go to BIOS. I notice that the Sys_Fan 1 fail warning is off (because this is the first time I've added a front case fan on this machine). I switch it on. Restart. Finally, both fans spinning as they should.
4. I've recently downclocked my CPU's Vcore due to overheating issues to 1.3 and then 1.2 V. So, with these two fans and a new CPU cooler (see previous thread), I reckoned I could return my CPU's Vcore clock back to normal. I did it in two steps. First to 1.3 V. Restart. BIOS. Then to 1.4 V. Restart, boot into Windows 7.
5. Checking if everything is normal in HWinfo64. It is. Now I was curious to hear how loud these two case fans would be at 2500 RPM. PC off. Flipped the switches to their medium positions. Double- and tripple-checking if I did it right because I don't wanna run the fans at full speed through my MBO fan connectors. Everything's fine.
6. PC on. The fans are all spinning but the motherboard isn't POST-ing and the screen is dead. I can't turn my PC off through its power switch. I have to cut the power completely at my PSU switch.
7. I've tried everything I could think of, but the end result always stayed the same. So I called a friend, the most tech-savvy person I know and he tells me to bring the rig where he works and he'll try troubleshooting the problem. No dice, we couldn't find a compatible PSU to test it. Couple hours later, round two at his apartment. He hooks my PSU to his rig and it works perfectly. He does similar tests with my HDD, RAM and GPU. Everything's OK. The only component we couldn't perform a test on was the CPU. His MBO uses a different socket. But he tells me that the CPU is probably fine too.
8. I forgot what other testing he conducted with the CMOS battery and whatnot but his conclusion was that the MBO pulled too many amps (not volts, amps!) for the case fans so that perhaps an integrated power regulator died. And that it usually happens with strong GPU's hooking up to an underpowered system. Two fans at 2500 RPM shouldn't have done that to my board.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
It's a socket AM3 board (GA-MA785GT-UD3H rev. 1.0), which was in service for over five years until yesterday, when I received those Enermax case fans. Well, this is how it went down:
1. PC off (this means that the PSU cable is unplugged as well). Both fans set to medium speed (2500 RPM). Turned PC on. Sys_Fan 1 (frontal intake fan) is working on low speed (1500 RPM). PC off. Turned the switch to low speed (1500 RPM) on both fans. PC on. Sys_Fan 1 now turns at around 750 RPM. PC off.
2. Switched fan positions. 1500 RPM setting. Sys_Fan 1 now making my second fan work at a lower speed. So, the fans aren't faulty, good to know.
3. Restart, go to BIOS. I notice that the Sys_Fan 1 fail warning is off (because this is the first time I've added a front case fan on this machine). I switch it on. Restart. Finally, both fans spinning as they should.
4. I've recently downclocked my CPU's Vcore due to overheating issues to 1.3 and then 1.2 V. So, with these two fans and a new CPU cooler (see previous thread), I reckoned I could return my CPU's Vcore clock back to normal. I did it in two steps. First to 1.3 V. Restart. BIOS. Then to 1.4 V. Restart, boot into Windows 7.
5. Checking if everything is normal in HWinfo64. It is. Now I was curious to hear how loud these two case fans would be at 2500 RPM. PC off. Flipped the switches to their medium positions. Double- and tripple-checking if I did it right because I don't wanna run the fans at full speed through my MBO fan connectors. Everything's fine.
6. PC on. The fans are all spinning but the motherboard isn't POST-ing and the screen is dead. I can't turn my PC off through its power switch. I have to cut the power completely at my PSU switch.
7. I've tried everything I could think of, but the end result always stayed the same. So I called a friend, the most tech-savvy person I know and he tells me to bring the rig where he works and he'll try troubleshooting the problem. No dice, we couldn't find a compatible PSU to test it. Couple hours later, round two at his apartment. He hooks my PSU to his rig and it works perfectly. He does similar tests with my HDD, RAM and GPU. Everything's OK. The only component we couldn't perform a test on was the CPU. His MBO uses a different socket. But he tells me that the CPU is probably fine too.
8. I forgot what other testing he conducted with the CMOS battery and whatnot but his conclusion was that the MBO pulled too many amps (not volts, amps!) for the case fans so that perhaps an integrated power regulator died. And that it usually happens with strong GPU's hooking up to an underpowered system. Two fans at 2500 RPM shouldn't have done that to my board.
Any thoughts or suggestions?