GA-X58A-UD3R yellow light issue. Will not turn on.

[nolij]

Everything worked fine last night. I went to turn on the PC today, and it powered on for a second if even that. lights flashed and that was it. So, i thought it might have shorted somewhere. So, i took everything out the case and tested with just board, psu, and memory and a fan. it did manage to power on so i turned it off to put it all back together. When i did put everything back together, it did the same thing. so again i thought it might have a short from the case. so i took it all out again, unplugged everything, even took out the little battery for a few minutes. plugged it all back up outside the case, and when i switch on the psu, the yellow light and green light next to it just flashes once and thats it. nothing happens.

from everything i read online, i will say we have had no storm so no power surge. nothing hit it, it has not fallen. it was shut down properly.
specs are the GA-X58A-UD3R board, i7 950, 850 watt corsair psu, radeon 6950, 4 x4gb g.skill, cpu and gpu liquid cooled.
I searched the loop and there was no leak so that is ruled out.

any other info needed i may have missed please ask.
im not sure if it is the board or the psu. and yes i have overclocked the chip but just to 3.83 at 1.3v.

 

[jsc]

The following is an expansion of my troubleshooting tips in the breadboarding link in the "Cannot boot" thread.

I have tested the following beep patterns on Gigabyte, eVGA, and ECS motherboards. Other BIOS' may be different, but they all use a single short beep for a successful POST.

Breadboard - that will help isolate any kind of case problem you might have.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/262730-31-breadboarding

Breadboard with just motherboard, CPU & HSF, case speaker, and PSU.

Make sure you plug the CPU power cable in. The system will not boot without it.

I always breadboard a new build. It takes only a few minutes, and you know you are putting good parts in the case once you are finished.

You can turn on the PC by momentarily shorting the two pins that the case power switch goes to. You should hear a series of long, single beeps indicating memory problems. Silence indicates a problem with (in most likely order) the PSU, motherboard, or CPU. Remember, at this time, you do not have a graphics card installed so the load on your PSU will be reduced.

If no beeps:
Running fans and drives and motherboard LED's do not necessarily indicate a good PSU. In the absence of a single short beep, they also do not indicate that the system is booting.

At this point, you can sort of check the PSU. Try to borrow a known good PSU of around 550 - 600 watts. That will power just about any system with a single GPU. If you cannot do that, use a DMM to measure the voltages. Measure between the colored wires and either chassis ground or the black wires. Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire (standby power supply): 5 volts always on. The green wire should also have 5 volts on it. It should go to 0 volts when you press the case power button (this is also a good way to test the power switch and the associated wiring), then back to 5 volts when you release the case power switch. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.

You can turn on the PSU by completely disconnecting the PSU and using a paperclip or jumper wire to short the green wire to one of the neighboring black wires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4&feature=youtube_gdata

A way that might be easier is to use the main power plug. Working from the back of the plug where the wires come out, use a bare paperclip to short between the green wire and one of the neighboring black wires. That will do the same thing with an installed PSU. It is also an easy way to bypass a questionable case power switch.

This checks the PSU under no load conditions, so it is not completely reliable. But if it can not pass this, it is dead. Then repeat the checks with the PSU plugged into the computer to put a load on the PSU.

If the system beeps:
If it looks like the PSU is good, install a memory stick. Boot. Beep pattern should change to one long and several short beeps indicating a missing graphics card.

Silence, long single beeps, or series of short beeps indicate a problem with the memory. If you get short beeps verify that the memory is in the appropriate motherboard slots.

Insert the video card and connect any necessary PCIe power connectors. Boot. At this point, the system should POST successfully (a single short beep). Notice that you do not need keyboard, mouse, monitor, or drives to successfully POST.
At this point, if the system doesn't work, it's either the video card or an inadequate PSU. Or rarely - the motherboard's PCIe interface.

Now start connecting the rest of the devices starting with the monitor, then keyboard and mouse, then the rest of the devices, testing after each step. It's possible that you can pass the POST with a defective video card. The POST routines can only check the video interface. It cannot check the internal parts of the video card.

 

[nolij]

i figured out the issue. it was shorting from the case. how i do not know since from the time i built it, until the issue, i have done nothing to the machine. apparently the screws from the cpu waterblock were touching the case metal and shorting it. like i said, odd, since i did nothing to the machine since i built it.


so i took all the water cooling equipment out and replaced with the stock coolers on the cpu and gpu. everything worked fine after that. now i have a new issue, i get the infamous reboot loop.

my ram and psu is good. i have all drives unplugged at the moment. i held the clear cmos button for 1 minute, tried again for 2, then tried again for 5 minutes as i read that in other threads. no luck. i took the cmos battery out for an hour with the machine unplugged. no luck. to clear things i have the rev.2 x58a ud3r board. im really thinking i have a bricked or bad board. all it does is loop and loop.

also i reseated the cpu, checked for bend pins, none, reapplied paste, nothing but a reboot loop.
it is still under warranty but after all the threads i read about their customer service and rma i am a bit worried i will have to come out of pocket for a new board.

this is a great board. lasted a year and overclocks great. oh, and when it was working fine i reset to optimized defaults so there was no overclocking after i got it working.

 

[nolij]

just a quick thought, would a dead cmos battery be an issue for it not booting? i mean all the important info is in the cmos, so if the pc cannot access it i think it would not let it boot, thus giving me the reboot loop. just a thought.

 

[spooky2th]

Are you able to get into the BIOS? If so, try loading the latest BIOS and setting it up correctly.