ASUS P8-Z68-V PRO Sli not working

[friggit]

Hello peeps. I purchased this ASUS P8-Z68-V PRO Motherboard about 2 months ago. It was working spectacular untill about 2 weeks ago when i decided to apply thermal paste to my cpu. As i was getting high temperatures. Turned out i barely applied any paste, so i went ahead and re-apply'd. I reset the CMOS for the heck of it. Also i did need to remove my video cards in order to have room to work in. So after i apply'd the paste and reseat my video cards i resumed to boot up my pc and get into windows. I checked my temps and they were way better than before. So i decided to turn on a game to play and monitor my temperatures. So i went ahead and played Crysis a bit,and to my suprise, my frames were way lower than before. I checked my Nvidia COntrol Panel and my 2nd card wasn't showing up. I then shut down my pc and reseated my 2nd card. Still no-go. It doesn't even show up in device manager. I read something on the internet about it being a driver issue, so i reinstalled my drivers. Still not showing. Reinstalled the OS, still not showing. The 2nd card does work because i removed the first one and put it in the 1st slot. And it works perfectly. I don't think the slot pooped out on me because the fan does turn on and the card does heat up, even with no power cables connected to it. Here are my PC specs.

Core i5 2500k@5.0GHZ
GTX 480 SLI
ASUS P8-Z68-V PRO
G.Skill 8gb DDR3 1333
2x 640gb WD Caviar Black Raid 0
Corsair HX1000

Thanks for any help you may provide, i am at a loss here.

PS:I also tried to flash the bios, but i get an integrity error. I just downloaded the file and put it in my C Drive and on a Flash Drive. Same thing.

 

[jaquith]

Okay, the GPU(s) work, but what about the 2nd PCIe? Pull the top GPU and only use the 2nd GPU in the 2nd PCIe slot -- what happens?

Otherwise, make certain the bridge is installed correctly using the connector furthest to the left.

 

[friggit]

Hmm, i haven't tried that. I figured i wouldn't get display if i tried. I'll see what i can do.

EDIT: I tried it and it doesn't work. I read the User Manual for my mobo and it says that the video card will only operate in the first slot.

 

[jaquith]

IF you don't get 'Display' then your PCIe slot is dead and MOBO = 'poof!'

 

[friggit]

Yeah i give up, it's dead. Ugh, lame. Now to see if i can even send it back.. I've had 0 problems with Gigabyte over the last couple of years. This is my first time using an ASUS board. I guess i'll go back.

 

[jaquith]

If you bent a CPU pin that bending the wrong pin(s) can do the same thing though you'd be the first I've seen. You might want to breadboard or simply unscrew the MOBO/PCIe and dangle the MOBO supported by a towel.

 

[ko888]

What I noticed when I was assembling my P8Z68-V PRO about two weeks ago was that the PCIEX16_2 slot only has eight lanes soldered to the motherboard (i.e. the eight lanes closest to the slot plate edge of the motherboard).

The part of the slot that isn't soldered to the motherboard will pull away from the motherboard if you don't fully press the release latch when removing the graphics card.

That's pretty cheap assembly quality if you ask me.

 

[jaquith]

I've seen them completely torn-off from shipping.

 

[friggit]

It's bull. I'm going for a nice Gigabyte motherboard. My old LGA775 mobo has been thrown around so many times and works flawlessly. I thought ASUS was about equal quality than Gigabyte.

 

[jaquith]

{It's bull} Gigabyte shipped with torn-off PCIe -> http://cnettv.cnet.com/falcon-northwest-mach-v-intel-core-i7-980x/9742-1_53-50084747.html scrub to 2:50

The ASUS you have is fine, if getting a Gigabyte the equivalent is the GA-Z68XP-UD5 to achieve the same vCore.

You experienced a user error...it happens.

 

[friggit]

Haha that's crazy. I don't see how it could have split in half like that!