AN8 32x Post Error

[Tobeman]

Hi there,

A customer came in our shop recently, whose PC we had upgraded with the above motherboard. If memory serves me right, it has an AMD X2 3800 CPU. A 7900GT graphics card and 512mb Corsair Value Select memory.

At time of fitting, we tried to persuade the customer to go for a decent mid-range powered PSU from the likes of Tagan or Seasonic but he kept his ghastly 600w EZ-Cool ( ) PSU. It appeared to have ample rating on the 12v rail (though how accurate/true the readings on the sticker are I don't know) and booted (to my surprise) fine. It has been this way for approx. 6 months.

Customer brought back his PC late last week with some issues, and after some diagnosis; I'm stuck. It won't stay on for longer than approx 5 mins. After which, it turns off. When trying to turn back on again, no luck, the PC has to be powered down for sometime before it comes back on, for a further 5mins give or take. I thought maybe the PSU was failing, or the PC spec was asking to much of it. I unplugged the graphics card, leaving the bear minimum components and the same happened again. Still, I swapped the PSU for a 420w Tagan I-XEYE PSU and still the same.

I felt the temperatures of heatsinks, CPU, graphics and chipset and they all felt luke-warm.

The POST boot code LED display dooberry displayed "66" when it has turned off and stays on that. I had a trawl through the manuals and FAQs on your site for the mobo specifically and general ones, and found no entries for "66". Help!

Many thanks,

Toby

[ABIT Sean]

I would need to know the series of codes displayed before I could diagnose the fault, and also is the code 66 or.6.6? or could it be 99?

[Tobeman]

I believe we have fixed the problem ourselves, it seems that the heatpipe was shorting on the motherboard, whenever any pressure was applied to it the PC would turn off, we cleaned the pipe up and gave the PC a blow out and it was running overnight with no issues.

To be continued..

[Tobeman]

Yep.. continued..

The PC is back in, the customer wanted us to reinstall his drivers after a format/reinstall (lost his original CD so couldn't do it himself from home). After reinstalling the drivers and restarted the machine was BSOD'ing late last week, I'd tried a lot to fix it, console repairs, chkdsks in the same PC and standalone machines but to no avail.

I come in this morning and the PC boots and now sits at "Verifying DMI Pool Data...." - is the motherboard on its way out?

Cheers,

Tobe

[Tobeman]

Having poked around on here a little, I noticed the screw whole near the DIMM slots shouldn't be screwed in. Could this have been causing the original random shutdowns? I have removed it since then, but now sits at the above message.

[ABIT Sean]

Have you removed the mounting for the screw as well, and can you see any physical damage to the PCB track near M7

[Tobeman]

Hi mate,

The mounting is removed and I can't see any physical damage (nothing like the other thread anyway).

Many thanks,

Tobe