- Aug 10, 2015
- 8,137
- 6
- 45,615
Hello,
About three years ago, I built my cousin a rather nice machine. He couldn't afford a good FX board and the 6 and 8 core FX chips were also out of his budget. We ended up settling for a Phenom II X6 1090T because it was being advertised locally for a really good price. We then adjusted our choice in motherboards accordingly. Below is the parts list of the current machine. The RAM has been changed and the crappy old PSU has been switched to the one in the list but no other changes have been made to hardware.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper T2 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($14.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 ATX AM3 Motherboard
Memory: Mushkin Stealth 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($42.99 @ Jet)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.78 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card
Case: DIYPC Zondda-S ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($62.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Full - USB 32/64-bit ($188.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $359.64
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-01-01 23:30 EST-0500
Here's what's been going on... He's been complaining recently that the machine was slowing down. I took a look at it and found that 33 programs (not including drivers) were set to launch at startup. I disabled the startup objects and we noticed an immediate improvement in performance. Go figure.
Just today, new problems began. When he went to turn the machine on in the morning, it said "New CPU Detected. Press F1 to Enter Setup or F2 to Load Default Values." He gave me a call before making a decision. I guided him through exploring the BIOS and we found out that it recognized the CPU model and was able to read all of its information like clock speed, voltage, temps, etc. However, in one menu we discovered that core 3 had been disabled. We had not made that choice ourselves. I said to leave it the way it was, save the settings and observe how the system behaves.
A series of events happened next which led me to question the integrity of the hardware.
1) When it saves ,it powers off and back on again. This is normal for this board. When it came back on, it said that Asus Core Unlocker could not be used with the current CPU. We checked BIOS, Asus Core Unlocker is (and was) turned off.
2) Once past the BIOS confusion, it began to load Windows. We saw the iconic circling dots under the Windows 10 logo. Then the screen flickered, the logo wasn't there when it came back but the dots were still there. This continued for five minutes until I told him to give up and turn it off.
3) He pressed the power button and the machine did not respond. He held the power button and the machine did not respond. He had to turn off the PSU in order to turn off the machine.
4) We loaded BIOS setup and prepared a USB stick with the newest version of BIOS for that board. We flashed over the current BIOS with the new one. This process worked correctly. Thank goodness. If it failed, I imagine the board would be bricked.
5) New CPU Detected message again. I wasn't sure whether this was another of the error from before, or if this BIOS simply noticed the CPU and the old BIOS' affiliation with the CPU didn't carry over. We loaded defaults and moved on.
6) Windows is stuck loading again. Same behavior as earlier.
7) I went over to his house and helped him reseat every component and connection in the machine. BIOS did not complain, Windows was still stuck.
8) I prepared another copy of Windows. It showed the same behavior. I tried every SATA port on the board, no change. I installed a SATA controller card to rule out any possibility of a bad onboard controller. No change in behavior.
9) We took everything out of the case and set them on cardboard boxes. Tried each stick of RAM individually, no changes. Removed the GPU and used onboard graphics. No changes.
10) We're more confused than when we started. We called it a day and we'll try again tomorrow.
Does this sound like the board or the CPU?
Is it worth pestering the local computer guru to see if he has any boards or CPUs that we can use to test our board and CPU?
Thanks to everybody that actually read this whole post.
-Darren
About three years ago, I built my cousin a rather nice machine. He couldn't afford a good FX board and the 6 and 8 core FX chips were also out of his budget. We ended up settling for a Phenom II X6 1090T because it was being advertised locally for a really good price. We then adjusted our choice in motherboards accordingly. Below is the parts list of the current machine. The RAM has been changed and the crappy old PSU has been switched to the one in the list but no other changes have been made to hardware.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper T2 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($14.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 ATX AM3 Motherboard
Memory: Mushkin Stealth 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($42.99 @ Jet)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.78 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card
Case: DIYPC Zondda-S ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($62.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Full - USB 32/64-bit ($188.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $359.64
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-01-01 23:30 EST-0500
Here's what's been going on... He's been complaining recently that the machine was slowing down. I took a look at it and found that 33 programs (not including drivers) were set to launch at startup. I disabled the startup objects and we noticed an immediate improvement in performance. Go figure.
Just today, new problems began. When he went to turn the machine on in the morning, it said "New CPU Detected. Press F1 to Enter Setup or F2 to Load Default Values." He gave me a call before making a decision. I guided him through exploring the BIOS and we found out that it recognized the CPU model and was able to read all of its information like clock speed, voltage, temps, etc. However, in one menu we discovered that core 3 had been disabled. We had not made that choice ourselves. I said to leave it the way it was, save the settings and observe how the system behaves.
A series of events happened next which led me to question the integrity of the hardware.
1) When it saves ,it powers off and back on again. This is normal for this board. When it came back on, it said that Asus Core Unlocker could not be used with the current CPU. We checked BIOS, Asus Core Unlocker is (and was) turned off.
2) Once past the BIOS confusion, it began to load Windows. We saw the iconic circling dots under the Windows 10 logo. Then the screen flickered, the logo wasn't there when it came back but the dots were still there. This continued for five minutes until I told him to give up and turn it off.
3) He pressed the power button and the machine did not respond. He held the power button and the machine did not respond. He had to turn off the PSU in order to turn off the machine.
4) We loaded BIOS setup and prepared a USB stick with the newest version of BIOS for that board. We flashed over the current BIOS with the new one. This process worked correctly. Thank goodness. If it failed, I imagine the board would be bricked.
5) New CPU Detected message again. I wasn't sure whether this was another of the error from before, or if this BIOS simply noticed the CPU and the old BIOS' affiliation with the CPU didn't carry over. We loaded defaults and moved on.
6) Windows is stuck loading again. Same behavior as earlier.
7) I went over to his house and helped him reseat every component and connection in the machine. BIOS did not complain, Windows was still stuck.
8) I prepared another copy of Windows. It showed the same behavior. I tried every SATA port on the board, no change. I installed a SATA controller card to rule out any possibility of a bad onboard controller. No change in behavior.
9) We took everything out of the case and set them on cardboard boxes. Tried each stick of RAM individually, no changes. Removed the GPU and used onboard graphics. No changes.
10) We're more confused than when we started. We called it a day and we'll try again tomorrow.
Does this sound like the board or the CPU?
Is it worth pestering the local computer guru to see if he has any boards or CPUs that we can use to test our board and CPU?
Thanks to everybody that actually read this whole post.
-Darren
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