Hello,
I have a homebuilt system that I've been using for almost a year. The specs are:
AMD FX-8320
MSI 970A-G46
Patriot Viper 3 2x4GB DDR3-1866 kit (9-10-9-27)
Galaxy Geforce GTX 560 MDT
650W Antec PSU
as well as a SSD and a 1TB Seagate data drive.
While cleaning my home office, I had to move the computer out in to the hall. Once cleaning was done, I brought it back in, set it up, and turned it on. It ran for about a half hour and hard locked. I rebooted and it bluescreened rather quickly. Opened the case and it turned out a loose power cable had fallen into the cpu fan and kept it from turning. I took everything apart, checked for visible heat damage (couldn't see any, but the motherboard PCB is black so it might not be visible) re-seated all the components, reapplied the thermal grease, and powered on with the case open. Fans were all working normally again. The system POSTed once, booted partway, and hard locked. Now it doesn't POST at all or even display the video card info blurb at power-on.
All motherboard power connectors are in, including the 8-pin CPU power and both PCI-e connectors on the video card. I tried with 1 DIMM and no change. The only thing that happens when I turn the system on is all 4 of the CPU_PHASE LEDs next to the 8-pin socket blink, once, twice, three times, and then twice again. Helpfully, the motherboard manual has NOTHING written to decode these blinking lights.
After googling around some I found out that the 970A-G46 is not considered to be very good, maybe especially in combination with an 8-core AMD FX. I didn't know that when I bought them, but this CPU *is* in the support list on the MSI website.
I called a local computer shop and they said they would charge me $50 to test the CPU, since I didn't buy it from them. I'd really rather not do that. Is there anything else I can do to determine if it's the motherboard or CPU, so I know which one to replace?
I have a homebuilt system that I've been using for almost a year. The specs are:
AMD FX-8320
MSI 970A-G46
Patriot Viper 3 2x4GB DDR3-1866 kit (9-10-9-27)
Galaxy Geforce GTX 560 MDT
650W Antec PSU
as well as a SSD and a 1TB Seagate data drive.
While cleaning my home office, I had to move the computer out in to the hall. Once cleaning was done, I brought it back in, set it up, and turned it on. It ran for about a half hour and hard locked. I rebooted and it bluescreened rather quickly. Opened the case and it turned out a loose power cable had fallen into the cpu fan and kept it from turning. I took everything apart, checked for visible heat damage (couldn't see any, but the motherboard PCB is black so it might not be visible) re-seated all the components, reapplied the thermal grease, and powered on with the case open. Fans were all working normally again. The system POSTed once, booted partway, and hard locked. Now it doesn't POST at all or even display the video card info blurb at power-on.
All motherboard power connectors are in, including the 8-pin CPU power and both PCI-e connectors on the video card. I tried with 1 DIMM and no change. The only thing that happens when I turn the system on is all 4 of the CPU_PHASE LEDs next to the 8-pin socket blink, once, twice, three times, and then twice again. Helpfully, the motherboard manual has NOTHING written to decode these blinking lights.
After googling around some I found out that the 970A-G46 is not considered to be very good, maybe especially in combination with an 8-core AMD FX. I didn't know that when I bought them, but this CPU *is* in the support list on the MSI website.
I called a local computer shop and they said they would charge me $50 to test the CPU, since I didn't buy it from them. I'd really rather not do that. Is there anything else I can do to determine if it's the motherboard or CPU, so I know which one to replace?
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