Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H dead? or maybe not...

[cloud7s7]

I put this system together in april after reading toms lowend/midend/highend system comparison. The basic specs are:

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H at a cheap $90
AMD Phenom 9500 $190
WINTEC AMPO 4GB (4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $80

The other components were from my previous system which one day decided it no longer wanted to boot anymore.

This system has been working fine since I put it together though it has locked up from time to time, it was pretty uncommon. I checked into possible lockup due to cooling but all my temps look good. I do leave me mystem on for very long periods of time (multiple days).

Last night I went to turn on my system and I got no signal to my monitor. So I tried it again and it started up fine.

This morning I turned it on and the same problem happend but this time I could not get it to come on after many tries. So I popped it open to look at some stuff. Everything is seated correctly. When turning the system on, the fans all come on. I have a seperate graphics card so out of curiousity I took it out and connected the monitor to the integrated graphics on the motherboard. Still wont come on. I took the ram out and tried each one seperately in the first slot, nadda. At this point i'm pulling my hair out wondering what i'm going to do stuck in S. Korea on an Air Force base with no computer for entertainment or homework. I went and ordered a replacement motherboard and a phenom 9850 from new egg. Its only 325 down the tube and I didnt know if it was the cpu or the motherboard. I came back to my room and played with my system some more just for the heck of it, starting and re-starting it and guess what happens? The dang thing comes on after a bunch more re-starts. Then it locks up giving me a "pci parity error" I re-start it a few more times and it comes up again but this time windows fully starts and its working fine at the moment.

Does anyone have any idea what kind of creepy little gremlin might be messing my system up while laughing at me?

 

[death512]

sound like your psu is dead

 

[cloud7s7]

If the power supply was dead, wouldn't the system recieve no power at all? The psu turns on and the all the case fans turn on as well as the CPU fan and the graphics card built in fan. All 6 of my hard drives power up. I've already tried a PSU from a friend's system and that didn't make any difference. Maybe it's possible my PSU damaged my motherboard on some way but it's hard to say. The best thing I could do would be to measure the voltage coming from the PSU but somehow that feels unlikely to be the problem.

 

[tvonbuer]

Hi,

I have the same problem. My GA-MA78GM-S2H is dead all of a sudden. It also first went dead during a restart, then worked again for a couple minutes and then with the next restart went dead. It hasn't been working since.

I thought that I ruined it when I put together my system, because the board got a few hits and scratches during the process. However, the board went dead when I was not touching it, but installing some software.

Now that I read your post I'm thinking maybe there could be a systematic manufacturing problem or something? Did you find out anything in the meantime?

regards,
Thomas

 

[kassler]

Have got the same problem fans, hardrives etc starts and spins up but no bios start. No signal to monitors. have removed videocard and memory, no change

 

[bthessel]

Mine did the same thing this week and died. Last week I came home a couple of days and it was locked up with a distorted image on the screen. After a couple of power cycles it would work. Now it won't POST at all. Getting ready to RMA it with Gigabyte.

 

[zvoran]

Mine did the same thing this week and died. Last week I came home a couple of days and it was locked up with a distorted image on the screen. After a couple of power cycles it would work. Now it won't POST at all. Getting ready to RMA it with Gigabyte.

The same happened to me after three months of using it...

 

[freddy_ss]

This GIGABYTE mother board is quite troublesome....

myspecs:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 +5000
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H
RAM: 2GB DDR2 800mhz Kingston Value
Vcard: Geforce 9600 GTS 1GB DDR3
Hdisk: 160GB Western Digital SATA
PSU: 500watt psu...i forgot the brand and model
OS: Windows XP SP2

for about a month ive used this mobo ive noticed that i keeps on crashing on occasions with the blue screen of death or nothing at all. The last time ive played "world in coflict" at max graphics setting (around 24 fps)which i have been doing with no problems at all the whole thing just turned off. Tried to turn it on this time it wont startup the bios this time, the power led is on, all the fans is spining, and not a single beep. after trying to troubleshoot it resetting the cmos bat which is fruitless I had it returned at my local pc shop, under warranty the local tech replaced my mobo twice the same brand and model with the first replacement showing the problem plus this time he "said the mobo damaged the 2gb ram" i dont know how the mobo did it. the third replacement got me a new board this time it didnt die... the motherf***er just keeps on rebooting resulting to another damage to my other hardware my 160gb SATA HDISK. now the hdisk had a BADSECTOR all thanks to an unknown problem with that GIGABYTE mobo. by the way my tech thinks it was my fault choosing that kind of setup well i did bought what was the only available high end pc on their store.

that mobo is still on the shop im planning on switching to ASUS or sumthing better just no more GIGABYTE this time...

 

[Guest]

Well here we are ,....into 2010 and I finally just pulled my GA-MA78-S2H mobo out of its factory box that it has been in for a long time and decided to put it together. Just used a A-Power 680 Watt psu, AMD X4 620 combo, PNY 9600 PCIE, and some decent Transend RAM PC 6400 4Gb.
It loaded good then started installing the drivers, chipset etc......and didnt post video on restart. I tried again and nogo. Pulled the plug out of the PSU and blead the board dry then cleared the cmos. POOF, the damn thing came back on!. Loaded a few more things and then restarted. There was no post beep or video. All the lights were on on the keyboard and all the fans were running, couldnt get it to shut off by holding the power button in either. Tried a few things like clearing cmos and resocketing RAM but no luck. Then suddenly BAM it came back on. I loaded OFP Dragon Rising and tried to play a bit. Seemed to run ok for the time being. Runs extremely cool and has no heat issues. Left it running for a bit and when I came back, there was no video and all the keyboard lights are on!
I got pissed and tore the whole system down and sent the board the gigabyte for RMA.
-Keep in mind ALL of the components for this PC and Brand New and never used before this. I have tested all the other components and they function fine on other system.
-Gigabyte sent me an email today telling me that there is nothing wrong with my motherboard and they want 10 bucks to ship it back to me! WTF

So what the F*** could possibly be wrong? I am Stumped.

 

[retox9k]

its gremlins... but seriously, try resetting your cmos... thats a little jumper on your MB... dont ask me where it is, you'll need to consult your manual for that...

also run to the store and get a PSU tester, I don't think thats the problem as your fans come online, but its hella handy to have in situations like this (should be 20 - 40)...

remove and re-seat everything including CPU.... and swap power cables if possible... try to boot with only the bare essentials CPU, MB, 1 stick of ram(if you have more than one... try each one individually)... if it still doesn't come on it's highly likely something died... you'll need spare parts to find out what broke if that diag doesn't work... good luck!

 

[Herzig]

Hi there,

I have the same problem for half a year now. Pushing the power button won't boot the system, but just starts all fans and led's. Furthermore i can't switch the PC off anymore.

But..... Try this: switch the PC on (it will not boot) and then flip the main power on the back of the PC off and then on again (do this quickly, within 1 second or so)... and voila: it is going to boot. Furthermore: if the board goes in sleep mode the same problem comes up. It seems 'dead'. But flipping the main power button wakes up the system again.

Short: I think this board has a sleep mode issue. Trying to boot just sets in to a weird sleep mode. Flipping the main power switch off and on will awake the board. Once 'up' the board runs smoothly (untill the next boot or sleep cycle).

Good luck,
Olaf

 

[Apetit]

Hi there,

I have the same problem for half a year now. Pushing the power button won't boot the system, but just starts all fans and led's. Furthermore i can't switch the PC off anymore.

But..... Try this: switch the PC on (it will not boot) and then flip the main power on the back of the PC off and then on again (do this quickly, within 1 second or so)... and voila: it is going to boot. Furthermore: if the board goes in sleep mode the same problem comes up. It seems 'dead'. But flipping the main power button wakes up the system again.

Short: I think this board has a sleep mode issue. Trying to boot just sets in to a weird sleep mode. Flipping the main power switch off and on will awake the board. Once 'up' the board runs smoothly (untill the next boot or sleep cycle).

Good luck,
Olaf

Thanks! I had/have the same problem. No booting but everything is spinning. Tried flipping the power switch 3 times and it booted! Anybody knows if this is the board or the psu?

Thanks for the tip.

 

[BerylLee]

do you have chance to get into bios and check it in detail for us?