ASUS AN8-SLI - No POST screen..

[BlueMagician]

There I was, having just sucessfully installed my SoundCard with drivers that WindoseXP was happy with, when half way through a boot, the system dropped instantly to standby.

Push the button, fans fired up, I think HDD's fired up, but no POST screen - no display - monitor went to sleep/no signal mode.. Wtf?!

Bear in mind that this hardware has been working fine for 4 days, and the only hardware problem of note is the 'tick tick tick-ing' power supply - which I was assured by OCZ tech support was safe to use until I get my RMA swapout. My case temps have been in the 40's as I haven't fitted my better fans yet, but GPU's idled at 45deg and CPU idled at 35-40deg - fan RPM's were sweet, so I don't think anything got cooked my not being cooled properly.

I had NOT got round to doing any overclocking, so I haven't pushed anything too far.

My initial reaction was that one of the PSU rails had toasted, but I don't have any other gear here to test with, so I'm kinda screwed. I unplugged all the power cables from everything, and reseated them, but no joy.

All the lights are on, but no-body's home. The green lights come on on the mobo and both GFX cards. IIRC the IDE CD light lights up for a second or two, and the HDD light does the same - ie: normal 'I've just got power' scenario.

But no VGA BIOS display, no POST. One time, out of the dozen that I tried to fire it up over 20 minutes, it posted and then hung at the 'Detecting Hard Drives' on the 'NVRAID' bootup screen.. I had to hold the power button to shutdown, but when I powered up again - back to square one - no POST.

Has the CPU died? Or has the clicking PSU finally met it's maker, and not supplying to the 'P4' connector or something? The lights on the PowerStream are green, ie: correct voltages, but I have no multimeter to hand to start testing outputs.

I don't want to start randomly RMA'ing bits and pieces, cos that'll take months to turnaround - and none of my mates have got any technology like this to swapout - so I'm battered....


Any insights are welcome,
S.

[Taz]

This sounds PSU related. You've got a serious amount of kit in there and the two video cards will test out your PSU on their own. Have you tried removing bits you don't need, including taking one of the video cards out to reduce the PSU requirements? Disconnect all USB devices as well and see if it posts.

Going down to one graphics card is the first thing I would try.

[BlueMagician]

I've been reading on Anandtech that many people have been having problems with corrupt BIOS when using the beta1003 a few weeks back, but I was using the final1003 so wouldn't expect it to have issues like that.

I'm having thoughts about the PSU, but why would it happen just like that?
If it were a rail issue, surely after the system did it's first shutdown, it wouldn't power up again? I'm confused.

I would have tried one GFX card only last night, but as I said, the green lights were on on both cards, so I figured no power issues - at least none serious enough to not get a POST!

I've taken the soundcard out, and never had any firewire/usb devices plugged in. So, now it's just mobo/cpu/mem/2hdds/2gfx/fans. Trouble is, I don't want to damage anything by trying stuff, if it IS power related..

And why would this be intermittent? Why would the system run fine, and then not? This kind of problem p****s me off, cos I could fiddle around for a day, get it to boot fine, and then it all happen again in two weeks time.


I called overclockers.co.uk on Thursday, and the engineer promised to send an RMA email for the PSU, and I asked for one for the mobo at the same time, but I've had nothing from them.


Grrr... S. <someone make it better>

[speedy_s]

I would think the mobo is dead . But as it happened after 4 days i am suspicious : The last build i did was the same thing. Fans runnig, HDD, CDROM, GFX card fan running but no dispaly. In the end mobo was faulty.

[BlueMagician]

Okay, I'm gonna try a few more things, then I'm gonna RMA the PSU and the Mobo..

The PSU needs RMA'ing anyway - the clicking is a recognised fault, but I'm worried that if overclockers.co.uk test the mobo and it works for the short time that they bother to look at it, I'll get charged a restock fee..

If I give up, and RMA, I've had it with the Asus boards.. Crappy drivers, slow BIOS revisions, and sooooooooo many people with DOA units....
What should I get instead... Gigabyte/DFI/MSI??
It has to be able to take my XP120...


Thanks so far guys,
S.

[Lee H]

Sorry if I sound pedantic but have you got the "EZ-PLUG" molex connected next to the PCI-E slot as this is used to help power the graphics.

Also - I would try the bios recovery suite thats on the CDROM to boot the bios back to manufacturing status and see if that jolts it back to life.

Fingers crossed one of these works

[BlueMagician]

...Sorry if I sound pedantic but have you got the "EZ-PLUG" molex connected next to the PCI-E slot as this is used to help power the graphics.

Also - I would try the bios recovery suite thats on the CDROM to boot the bios back to manufacturing status and see if that jolts it back to life...

Yup, I've got it all hooked up properly.. It was running fine (driver conflicts aside) for 4 days... XP installed, 3Dmark05 running for a couple hours to dribble over graphics quality

It's the fact that it just powered down in the middle of a boot that I don't like, and why after all this time? Well wierd. It wasn't a tidy 'Windows feels like shutting down' shutdown either, it was just.. <bam> power off.

Plus the fact that ONCE out of the numerous times I've tried to boot, it HAS posted, but hung at the NVRAID deteecting HDD's screen... But then decided not to work again... It's pants. The more I work with this board, the more I hate it.


<depressed, but glad of the community here to keep me smiling>
S.

[BlueMagician]

Ok.. I've done the following:

> Removed Soundcard again. No POST.
> Removed one GFX card, leaving the one in PCIe slot nearest CPU. Switched EZ card to SINGLE. No POST.
> Tried other GFX card in SINGLE mode. No POST.
> Stayed in SINGLE GFX card mode. Removed CD-ROM IDE Cable. No POST.
> Stayed in SINGLE GFX card mode. Removed SATA HDD Cables. No POST.
> Performed CMOS jumper reset/normal cycle. No POST.

No beeps, no voice errors. Just fans and Green LEDs.

My RAM pair was running fine, so I've left that as it was, in the correct slots.
And anyway, if it were RAM or CPU, I'd expect beep codes or ASUS voice to pipe up!
The CPU temp was fine when I last saw it, and all the fan RPM's were good, so nothing should have cooked. I have no other RAM or AMD CPU to test.


I am more and more suspicious that I have received a pre-used/returned product:

1> I remember that although the motherboard accessories were freshly wrapped when I opened the box, the ANTI-STAT BAG containing the motherboard HAD NO STICKER or SEAL on it.. Is this usual?

2> Reading the manual states that "by default, the [asus EZ selector] card is set for a single graphics card". MINE WAS SET TO DUAL.


As I said above, I'm gonna RMA the PSU anyway, because of this ticking sound, but I'm not so sure this is the cause as every other device powers fine, and there are green lights where there are supposed to be green lights.. Just wondering if it's worth RMA'ing the mobo at the same time?

What does everyone think I should do now?
S.

[skuzgib]

Mine was set to dual out of the box, and I don't remember there being a sticker...

[BlueMagician]

Can I ask where you got ur mobo from Skuzgib?

[RDL]

There is the possibility that Overclockers (or whoever you got the board from) take the mobo out of the box and check it. I know for a fact there is a few companies/shops who do this.

Have you tried taking the whole kit apart and rebuilding? Maybe a wire came loose, although it's strange the LEDs are on. But this might actually work out to be the fastest way of doing things, I know it is for me sometimes.

[BlueMagician]

I've unplugged and replugged all the power cables, and reseated the GFX cards through testing.. I don't think there's a lot else a rebuild would solve. Plus, if it is intermittent, there's a chance that rebuilding wil solve it, only to reoccur in weeks time..

Keep it coming,
<drinks strong coffee> S.

[BlueMagician]

Bumpity bump...

S.

[Taz]

Just another thought. Earlier today I naffed up my system by trying to o/c it too much. In the end I had to clear the CMOS RAM (see my thread about Asus CPR) to get it to POST again. Is it worth trying this in your case?

[skuzgib]

Just another thought. Earlier today I naffed up my system by trying to o/c it too much. In the end I had to clear the CMOS RAM (see my thread about Asus CPR) to get it to POST again. Is it worth trying this in your case?

I was just gonna suggest this...

[Clstrphbc_donut]

I dont know much about raid, but are you sure it hasnt dropped the array? As you keep mentioning nothing happens when it gets to that bit. When my IDE's are incorrectly set up, it locks boot at that point.