ASUS P5W-DH ... no boot, no post, now something fried!?

[rtech808]

Hi,

First off, I've spent a great deal of time on these forums & appreciate all the knowledge gained from it. I've never had much to contribute, so I've not posted. Now what I have is a complete and total nightmare on my hands & could really use some advice.

Here's the scenario.

One day my pc crashed pretty hard. It would just hang until I hit reset. Upon trying to reboot..... fans would spin, no post. Power down.... try to start up, completely dead, no fans & no sign of life.

I'd then go through the process of going through the case & removing the power supply from the motherboard & resetting some cables. Eventually the PC would pop on, this would happen at random for a few months. But considering it would only happen every couple of weeks, I didn't take it too seriously. In the meantime I did look into the problem & appeared to be the power supply. So the problem persisted & began to happen more frequently, until it really became a concern.

So I then went through the process of taking the motherboard out & removing pci cards, ram, graphics, ect ect. One piece at a time, trying to find the source of the problem, which I didn't find until much much later (read on). I got the system to boot once at random, but still couldn't pin point the problem. Research led me to the decision it was time for a new power supply & new case (i suspected something was touching the motherboard, causing it to short out at random).

So the original system...

ASUS P5W DH DELUXE
E6600 CORE 2 DUO
2 X CORSAIRS CM2X1024-6400 RAM (1 GIG EACH)
ENERMAX ELT500AWT 500 WATT POWER SUPPLY
ANTEC SOLO CASE
2 MAXTOR DRIVES
1 SEAGATE SATA DRIVE


Considering I had to make a project out of this & gut the whole machine to rebuild. I decided to do an upgrade on the processor as well.
So changes to the system...

Q6600 QUAD CORE (replacing E6600 Core 2 Duo)
ANTEC P182 (replacing Antec Solo case)
ANTEC NEOPOWER 650 Watt (replacing Enermax Power Supply)

After rebuilding the whole thing & doing such a thoughtful job on the cabling. I go to hit the power button for the first time & get a quick flash, no boot, no fans, no nothing. Trying to stay calm, I went through to make sure everything was sitting right, all good, I've build about 15 machines in the last 6 years for myself & others, so I'm not a total noob.

Did some more reading, light was always on the motherboard with both power supplies, so that wasn't the problem. Tried clearing CMOS, removing battery... ect ect....

So back to square one, my worst fear, figured it was the motherboard at this point. For laughs I tried reseating some cables, hoping to find an answer... well I did! (sort of)
So I removed the primary IDE cable connecting the 2 IDE Hardrives. Power, fans spinning, JUICE... score! In excitement, I powered down, hoping that it could just be a bad IDE cable causing the problem this whole time. Swapped it out, hit power... nothing again.... at this point, I figured the problem would be the actual IDE connector on the motherboard (bummer). What was happening previously, I'd go through the case & probably jiggle the IDE cable into the sweet spot, causing it to boot. Anyway... the worst to come...

To confirm this theory I pulled the IDE cable out again to see if the machine would get some juice. It powered on for about 5 seconds & stopped. The aftermath, a smell, the smell of something cooking.... now I'm totally lost, what did I fry? Hopefully not the brand new CPU!?

I'm totally lost here guys. I'm not a total pro, but I'm usually the guy that friends & colleagues come to when they need help with their PCs. I've never fried a component & have never run into this sort of problem before. Any advice or theories?? I should just eat it & buy a new motherboard & hope the CPU isn't fried?

Thanks in advance!

 

[evongugg]

Check all your connections, power and data.
Try your components in a different computer until you can pinpoint the fault.

 

[GhislainG]

Does it power up with no devices attached to the motherboard, except for the video card (no floppy, disk, CDROM, etc.)? Also make sure that none of the devices is connected to the PSU.

 

[Schepsel]

Deja vu!

Same problems here about a year ago. It's still lying on a shelf for troubleshooting as such... I solved the problem by buying a new MOBO so no solution found on my behalf. My problems started when I went CF with two HD3870's.

Good luck.

 

[rtech808]

Thanks for the replies. I did try gutting the machine piece for piece to see if it would run. This is where i found the problem to be the IDE connector, causing the system to short out. So I guess that renders the mobo useless.

What really gets me, is now I've fried something. Removing the IDE cable allowed the system to boot for a few second, which shut down & produced a smell (didn’t actually see smoke). I tried it again & same thing happened. I'm pretty conservative & use a fine layer of thermal paste on the heatsink & processor. Am I not using enough? When stuff like this happens, you really start to doubt yourself, even though you've been through it all successfully in the past.

 

[rtech808]

Deja vu!

Same problems here about a year ago. It's still lying on a shelf for troubleshooting as such... I solved the problem by buying a new MOBO so no solution found on my behalf. My problems started when I went CF with two HD3870's.

Good luck.

It's all a big mystery isn't it? Reading all the random posts, which described the same exact problem, did not yield a solution. Only solution is the mobo is a junker & time to move on I suppose.

 

[rtech808]

any suggestions for a replacement? they discontinued it apparently, but loved the features. looking at the p5k deluxe.