No Video, 1 - 3 Beep -> Is my GFX card dead?

DGalt

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Jul 17, 2009
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Hey all,

About a year ago I built a desktop consisting of these components:

Foxconn A7DA - 3.0 AM3 790GX RT (motherboard)
AMD Phenom II x 4 955 (CPU)
Radeon 4890 (GFX card)
4 x 2GB Kingston DDR3 1333 (RAM)
WD 500 GB hd
OCZ 600W PSU

Until about a week ago the system was working fine. I then packed it up for my move to Chicago. When I went to set the system up tonight it won't boot (or, at least, I have no video). My first thought was a bad HDMI cable or my monitor was being screwy, but after testing both with another computer that turned out not to be the case.

Originally I was getting a Beep ----- Beep. I popped out the GFX card and the RAM and replaced them all. I also cleared the CMOS jumpers.

After replacing everything I am now getting a Beep followed by 3 rapid beeps.

The green light on the MOBO is still lit. Fans on everything (including GFX card) are all working (not sure if this matters...I'm at a loss right now). I can't imagine all 4 sticks of RAM simultaneously going bad.

So is my GFX card probably dead? (Bought from XFX with a lifetime warranty, so hopefully I can get it replaced).

I can't think of any other way to diagnose this.

Thoughts?

Thanks
 

Griffolion

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May 28, 2009
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A beep followed by 3 short rapid beeps indicates a memory fault, either on the graphics card or RAM. If you haven't already done so, try switching your computer on with only 1 stick of RAM, swapping out each of the sticks to see if the culprit is there. If the problem persists its most likely a memory module on your graphics card has gone and will need RMA'ing.

Be careful, XFX aren't best known for their returns policy...
 

DGalt

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Jul 17, 2009
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I don't have another machine I can plug the gfx card into

Also, the mobo has an integrated graphics card, but resetting the CMOS didn't seem to change which video source the computer was using. I'm pretty sure that when I first built the computer I didn't need to go into the BIOS and make the Radeon gfx card the default. Should I try removing the Radeon card, resetting CMOS, and then booting? (unless the MOBO is the issue, in which case I'm royally screwed in either case).


Looking through that checklist I've tried most of that short of taking the whole system apart and building it out of the case.

In the checklist, when it says "pull everything but the PSU and HSF" I'm assuming that includes things like the HD, disk drives, etc. on top of the RAM and GFX card, right?

Edit:

Griffolion...yeah I've tried booting with only 1 stick of RAM, swapping each stick out to test all 4 sticks. I also tried each of the channels for the RAM, same issue.