Upgrading g3258 to Xeon Intel Xeon E3-1231V3 (troubleshooting help)

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Mikesmithjohnson

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Aug 29, 2015
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Hi all,

I have just installed a new Xeon chip and I can not get anything to come up on my screen. I understand the Xeon does not have any built in graphics but I am using a video card that worked fine prior to upgrade.I have tried clearing cmos and my mobo has duel bios setup but for the life of me I cant get anything to come on screen other then the monitor telling me it doesnt see any video source. The pc will power up for about 15 seconds then will shut off and repeat the process. I did upgrade to windows 10 earlier but I had several reboots since then. My specs are as follows and I appreciate any help.

Intel Xeon E3-1231V3
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer
MSI Radeon R9 270X R9 270X
Team Dark Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Rosewill RX750-S-B - Xtreme Series 750-Watt Active PFC Power Supply
Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM
 
Solution
synphul
Usually if a stick is bad it won't work by itself. You can try one stick at a time and run memtest on it, then shut down, swap the ram sticks and run memtest on the other to see if you get any errors. When you say they won't run in dual channel, is that with either cpu? If so it could be a motherboard issue since the memory controller is integrated to the cpu and not part of the motherboard. If it were a memory controller issue I'd think one of the two cpu's would work with both sticks if the motherboard were fine even if one of the memory controllers onboard either of the cpu's was faulty.

Is there any chance at all that the back plate for the new cooler you put on is touching part of the connections on the backside of the motherboard...
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synphul

synphul

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Did you make sure to unplug the monitor from the motherboard's video output and plug into the back of the 270x? Do you still have the g3258 and if so try reinstalling it and see if it will work. I'm surprised with a bios reset that it's not picking up the gpu to give you at least some sort of display from the bios. Win10 wouldn't have anything to do with that since the os hasn't loaded yet while the machine is posting.

When you cleared the cmos, did you try doing it by removing the battery? Try powering off the system, unplugging the power supply, remove the cmos coin cell battery for a minute or two then put it back in. Plug the psu back in at the back of the case and try to power it on. Might not hurt to double check and make sure all your power connections are plugged in, the 4/8pin cpu power, 20+4 pin motherboard power and the pcie power connector to the gpu.
 
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Mikesmithjohnson

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Aug 29, 2015
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Yes I unplugged everything and reset the battery. Plugged it all back in along with the g3258 and now it powers on longer but still no screen even if I use the hdmi directly off the mobo (with g3258). The only thing that has changed hardware wise was the cpu cooler. I am now using the stock heatsink from the xeon instead of my aio watercooler. Maybe I'm not reseting the cmos correctly with the jumper? I figured removing the battery would take care of that incase I didnt. Really stuck now.

 
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synphul

synphul

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I'm not sure, kind of stumped. Changing a cpu shouldn't have done anything and even if there was an issue putting the g3258 back in and using the igpu should have worked since it did before. Swapping coolers isn't enough to cause a problem unless something drastic happened like crushing the motherboard or something insane. It's not os related since it's not even reaching that point. Even if there were an issue with the video card not being seated the igpu would work, if the motherboard hdmi were somehow faulty the video card would have eliminated that issue. Doubtful both pcie port and onboard hdmi went out freakishly at the same time. You didn't mention a bios update so doubtful the bios would have bricked for no reason. Checked the website and didn't see anything about a dual bios but if it has one maybe the manual explains how to swap from one to the other.

Do you hear the standard bios beep and see the fans and everything spin up like they should when powering on? Since you have hdmi out from the motherboard, is there any way to connect an hdmi cable from the pc to a tv to see if you can get picture on another screen?
 
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Mikesmithjohnson

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Aug 29, 2015
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Unfortunately I never hooked up the speaker and its tucked away in storage somewhere. After alot of research and troubleshooting I have finally gotten it to boot through. The problem was and still is it will NOT boot if I have the ram modules in duel channel mode. Both sticks work perfectly by themselves or even together if not using duel channel. I would really hate to use just 4g and I am dreading sending this back and being without a pc so if anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. I find it weird that all of a sudden this problem occurs during a cpu upgrade. should I flash the bios to the latest and see if that does the trick?
 
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st3v30

st3v30

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Just put them in different RAM slots but same color, it happens sometimes when you swap some parts that RAM case BOOT problems.
So try different RAM slots color and swap them, play with them a bit.
Once you boot with bots sticks in dual channel, enter BIOS and Load Default Settings.
 
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Mikesmithjohnson

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Aug 29, 2015
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I have tried the ram by themselves in every slot and they work fine. When I put them in duel channel (slots 1&3 or 2&4) I cant boot. I am assuming something is wrong with the mobo but idk. Is it possible that a stick is bad? I mean wouldnt it not work at all by itself if it was bad? I also upgraded the bios and still same issue.
 
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synphul

synphul

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Mar 11, 2011
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Usually if a stick is bad it won't work by itself. You can try one stick at a time and run memtest on it, then shut down, swap the ram sticks and run memtest on the other to see if you get any errors. When you say they won't run in dual channel, is that with either cpu? If so it could be a motherboard issue since the memory controller is integrated to the cpu and not part of the motherboard. If it were a memory controller issue I'd think one of the two cpu's would work with both sticks if the motherboard were fine even if one of the memory controllers onboard either of the cpu's was faulty.

Is there any chance at all that the back plate for the new cooler you put on is touching part of the connections on the backside of the motherboard or coming into contact with the motherboard tray portion of the case? Wondering if it's not causing some sort of issue there with the dimm slots or something that didn't exist before. It's worth seeing if the sticks will both run but instead of in slots 1/3 or 2/4 try 1/2 or 3/4. It would put them back to single channel but if it works at least you'd have all 8gb. Like st3v30 mentioned, there's not a huge real world difference in performance single vs dual channel especially in games. Not like there is 4 vs 8gb ram regardless of single/dual channel.
 
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Solution
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Mikesmithjohnson

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Aug 29, 2015
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Thanks I did check the back of the mobo and nothing is touching. I did in fact try to run the g3258 at some point last night with no luck. I do not remember how far I went with the troubleshooting steps. Thank you and everyone else for trying to help my issue I really appreciate it. The sticks will run perfectly fine while not in duel channel so thats what I am going to do. Right now i have them in 1&2 with the Xeon and everything is ok. I really hate not getting to the bottom of this one but I dont have days to play around with it. Thank you everyone for all of your help.
 
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synphul

synphul

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Sorry it wasn't an easier fix, it may just be a fault that showed up in the motherboard. A lot of these type problems are difficult to narrow down with so many pieces to the puzzle. Then there are always the 'gremlins', the unexplained bugs that show up for seemingly no apparent reason. Like you said it can be a real time suck which is why the 'easy' fix sometimes is to throw parts at a problem like replacing the motherboard to see if it fixes it. 5-10min to do a board swap vs days of intricate diagnostics. Some people don't have any choice because they're low on funds, others time is money. At least you're able to run both sticks of memory now. Dropping your ram in half would have been a performance hit compared to single vs dual channel.

Toward the bottom of this page are real world benchmarks. If you compare to the synthetic benchmarks you'll see a bit of a difference, dual channel memory is better in theory than in practice. In reality it barely makes a difference even in video editing.
http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1349-ram-how-dual-channel-works-vs-single-channel/Page-3
 
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