Got an urgent issue, not sure if PSU or Mobo related

[fantasticfrank]

Alright let me start by telling you I just recently put together a new gaming rig, my first major PC build. I used an Asus P8Z77V-PRO Mobo with an Intel i5 3570k CPU. Also got a Seasonic M12 II PSU, a HIS Radeon 7850 GPU, and two 4 GB G.Skill RAM. And I'm not OCing, but since the 3570k gets pretty hot, I also got a Hyper 212 aftermarket cooler. Well got all of my parts last Thursday, I got the CPU and Mobo from the microcenter, and got everything else from Newegg. I finished building it Thursday night, and everything powered on with no problems except I had the DDRAM surface mounted red LED on, and I wasn't getting anything to display on my monitor. After a little research and some help from people on the forum, I narrowed my problem down to the first three DDRAM slots on the Mobo. I could get the PC to start up with no problems with one stick of RAM in the 4th DDRAM slot on the Mobo, but one in any of the rest of them would cause it to hang up. I tried fixing the problem by downloading all of the most recent drivers on the PC for the Mobo from the Asus website, but that didn't fix the problem. The three slots were still bad, and the fourth one worked fine. Using just the fourth slot, I was able to use my PC all weekend with no problems, mostly to play the GW2 beta.

On Tuesday, I exchanged my Mobo with the bad DDRAM slots for a new one from microcenter. And Tuesday night, I went home and rebuilt my rig again. I built it much faster the second time, and I had the time and resources to make it nice and neat. I was so proud of myself, I had the thing running perfectly and it looked awesome.

Now yesterday when I got home from the bar, I wanted to set my rig all up, I got myself a new table for my monitor. But when I turned it on, I would always have to go through the setup because I was getting a CPU fan error. The mobo has the default low for the fan at 600 RPM and it was running at 590. Since I have two other case fans at almost 1000 RPM, I changed the default low to 500 to stop it from defaulting to setup mode on startup. I noticed I still had a disc in my drive, I loaded it up and it was my mobo drivers disc. I figured there could be some drivers I missed on the mobo so I opened it up, and hit install. I went through the motions and I walked away. When I came back my rig was off, and when I went to hit the power button, my motherboard attempted to start up and then powered off instantly. I opened the case to observe it further, the LED was lit green on my mobo, and then when I hit the power button it tried to boot, all the fans attempted to spin, and I could see the little surface mounted LEDs try to power on as well. Then it wouldn't respond to the power button at all. The only way I can try to give it power again is if I unplug the PSU and try again. And it would do the same thing, so now I'm stuck.

So I removed everything from the motherboard, removed it from my case and inspected for anything that looked out of the ordinary. Also did the same with CPU, the GPU, and the RAM. Didn't see anything that would make me think any of them are the problem. Then I tried to do a test boot out of the case just using the PSU, GPU, Mobo, and the RAM installed. Same thing is happening, it tries to boot up but within a second it powers off. Also tried resetting my CMOS when I was doing the test boot, (for the record, I never removed the battery)but still no luck, same result. Since I didn't go in and customize my drivers which I knew I should have done, but I was busy at the time and I figured installing recommended it wouldn't do any serious harm. I think the BIOS I updated originally from the Asus website was a newer driver than the one that was on the Asus CD. So by having the disc install an older driver over the newer driver, they conflicted and I crashed my Mobo. I'm not sure if that's exactly what happened, but that's the only thing I can think of. I ran the PC fine all weekend, and then ran it for a good hour on Tuesday night after I installed the new mobo. I don't know if you guys could tell me anymore, if someones encountered this problem before. If it is my mobo, I did buy a warranty, and it's still within 15 days of my original purchase date, so hopefully I'll be able to return it again. I just don't want to get a new mobo and it turns out it was a PSU problem, but I've got no other mobos or PSU to use to try to weed out one or the other.

I don't know if any of you have encountered something similar. I can't believe I made such an awful mistake, after all of the precaution I took as I built the rig and then rebuilt it and some software ends up crashing it. Well I appreciate everyone's help/feedback and I hope someone can help me or atleast have some answers. Thanks in advanced.

 

[fantasticfrank]

Wow 40 views and not even a comment or a suggestion. Thanks guys!


BUMP

 

[Raiddinn]

I have actually seen the problem many times and I don't think there is a simple fix.

For what its worth, I don't think it is related to your installing an older BIOS over a newer one. It may be, but it isn't my first thought. As long as it was a BIOS for that board it should work. If it was a BIOS for a different board entirely then you could be screwed, but I doubt that is it.

I can also say that its probably not related to any other drivers you installed or windows updates you did.

I have never seen a windows update cause something to restart at any time before the Windows logo is displayed. If you can't get into the BIOS because it restarts too fast it is probably either a BIOS problem or a hardware problem.

I am inclined to believe one of the pieces of hardware went bad that fast if it restarts before it even shows the BIOS screen.

The best way that I would suggest to start tackling this would be to simplify things as much as possible.

1) Remove the power cord going to the wall
2) Take out the battery
3) Mark what time it is
4) Start taking out things that are not absolutely required for a computer to boot, that means CD drives, video cards, RAM sticks above 1, anything connected to the outside other than mouse/keyboard/monitor, and so on
5) With the 1 RAM stick left in, push hard on it to make sure its all the way in.
6) After 30 min has passed from 3, then put it back in
7) Reconnect the cord and try to turn it on.

Tell me what happens after you do that stuff.

 

[fantasticfrank]

First off, I'm at work, so I'll try removing the battery and try those steps when I get home.

When I originally had my first problem where it wouldn't boot from any of the first three RAM slots, I used my flash drive to download all of the latest driver updates to try to fix the problem. From Asus's website, I installed the three latest BIOS updates, v. 0801, v. 0906, and the latest at the time v. 1015. http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77V_PRO/#download

Since I couldn't get it to boot on any of the other RAM slots, I figured one of those could possibly have an update that might fix my problem. So originally I never installed any of the drivers directly from the Asus disc that came with the mobo, and I just went and updated them using my flash drive.

When I turn the power supply on, the LED is lit green on my mobo. Then when I power the PC on, literally within a split second that it powers on, it turns off. The fans all start to move, the surface mounted LEDs all flash, and then nothing, no power at all, but that LED is still green. So it doesn't even have time to try to boot to any screen, I just lose power almost immediately.

I basically tried what you're recommending last night aside from removing the battery, so hopefully removing and resetting that will fix my problem. I removed everything from my motherboard, removed the mobo from the case, reseated my CPU, hyper 212, GPU, and put one RAM stick into DDRAM slot 1. Then I hooked up the PSU and it was still doing the same thing out of the case with nothing but what's required to get it to start hooked up.

I wish I had another PSU or mobo to try so I could narrow down the problem to one specific component, but I don't because this was my first build. Do you know of anyway to check my Seasonic M12 II power supply, besides swapping it for a known good one?

Thank you Raiddinn, I appreciate the help, and I will try these steps when I get home from work today. If it is the motherboard, I hope I only have to take one more trip back to microcenter.

 

[Raiddinn]

If the place you work at has a dedicated IT staff, they might have a spare PSU on hand that you can borrow overnight if you are willing to sign a document saying you intend to bring it back.

Otherwise, it is hard to test PSUs without having a spare laying around.

Relatives and friends can also be decent sources or borrowed PSUs.

Anyway, let me know how things go when you get home and try that stuff.

It probably won't make too much of a difference, but try it anyway, just to make sure.

 

[fantasticfrank]

When I got home, I removed the battery, and removed everything from my motherboard. Then after about a half hour, I replaced the battery and the power supply connections, and held the CMOS pushbutton for about 5-10 seconds. And tried to boot up, and I seem to still be getting the same result. It powers up for a second, and immediately loses power.

I do have a IT staff onsite, I contacted one of the techs yesterday. He actually said he had a 750 W PSU in his rig at home, and he'd be willing to let me borrow it over the weekend as long as I gave it back to him on Monday.

So hopefully he brought that PSU in today, and I'll be able to figure out if my motherboard is the problem. Hopefully it's just the PSU and somehow it cooincidently went at the same time I was downloading mobo drivers. If it turns out to be my mobo, I'm not looking forward to taking this thing apart again and have to make the trip back to microcenter.

 

[Raiddinn]

Motherboard replacements are annoying I agree.

I recently switched out my old processor/motherboard with a new one of both and the biggest PITA for me is to have to redo all the cabling.

For people who are as big on airflow as I am, that is pretty common I think.

 

[fantasticfrank]

Yes they can get annoying especially when this is the third time in a week and a half that I'll have to replace it. The taking everything apart isn't the part that bothers me, it's the hour and a half to two hour trip I have to take to microcenter depending on how bad traffic is getting into the city.

I think I should make good time if I go in Saturday morning because there won't be as many people on the highway. For someone like yourself that has encountered this issue before, do you think it is more likely a PSU problem because I lose power so fast, or the motherboard because it gets power for that split second before going down? Would I not get power at all if it points to the PSU? And have you ever seen a PSU cooincidently die when trying to load software, preferably drivers? I'm assuming it's a motherboard problem, but I don't want to rule anything out.

 

[Raiddinn]

I don't remember if Micro Center has a complaint department or not, but if so you might just want to take your computer with you and tell them that you just got this from them and it won't work. They might look at it and fix it for free.

I would really rather not tell you to just buy things blind, but if you can't borrow a PSU from someone to test with and you can't do the above, then I would probably go for the motherboard first. Or just get both and try replacing the motherboard first. If you keep the PSU unopened they might take it back without too much fuss assuming it isn't really a PSU problem.

 

[fantasticfrank]

Well it figures the IT tech that told me I could borrow his power supply this weekend bailed on me and didn't show up to work today. I even brought my PSU as collateral and it would've been nice to see if he could run his system using it.

So I just took my rig apart, and I'm going to take the mobo, CPU, RAM, and PSU to microcenter tomorrow morning. They do have a repair center, I don't know if it has a complaint department. Hopefully they don't give me any trouble because I already exchanged it once before.

 

[Raiddinn]

Sorry to hear about the IT guy, let me know how the Micro Center thing turns out.

 

[fantasticfrank]

Went to microcenter and the customer service guy said he agreed and thought the problem was my mobo. So he exchanged it for me for another one. Just got home and hooked up the mobo, PSU, GPU, and RAM, and the mobo LED is lit green again. Tried shorting the power pins, and the PSU fan starts and the CPU fan tries to start and stops, and the GPU fan doesn't move at all. Then after about 15-20 seconds the PSU fan slows and stops. Now does that tell me my PSU is definitely my problem? I'm not even sure what to think now. I believe I got a warranty for the PSU, I'm not sure how the Newegg process works.

 

[Raiddinn]

Sucks, but you might want to wait till you can get the PSU from the IT guy to test with.

At this point I can't really guarantee you that it i related to the PSU.

It is a distinct possibility, but it might take a while to get through the RMA process and it might not be bad anyway.

 

[fantasticfrank]

If it isn't my PSU, what else could it be? Do you think I got a third faulty motherboard? It seems to be a power issue, if my CPU somehow is bad, would that cause the motherboard to fail to power up? What other possibilities could it be?

Everything was working fine with the other two motherboards when I first test booted them, one had a RAM slot issue and the other had no issues until I installed the motherboard drivers. Ever since I did that, I've had nonstop problems and I can't seem to narrow my problem to any one specific thing.

I should have bought another PSU from microcenter when I was there. I did look at some of them, but for a good 600 watt PSU was like $120 and any other top rated ones were closer to $200. Maybe I'll buy another PSU from Newegg, the M12 II was one of the higher rated PSUs, so do you recommend any specific ones? I've been told to go with Corsair, Seasonic or a few other select brands because some of the other cheaper brands are unreliable.

 

[Raiddinn]

My favorite brand is XFX. Seasonic makes all their PSUs.

Antec uses a lot of Seasonic made PSUs, but also has a lot made by Delta. Corsair uses a lot of Seasonic too, but more than half are Channel Well PSUs.

If you go with either of those mainstream brands you have to research to make sure you are getting a Seasonic made one, with XFX you don't have to research. Also with Seasonic's own brand you don't have to research.

Most other brands aren't that great.

You should be able to get an XFX 650w for less than $100, maybe less than $80, I got mine for $60 on a good deal with a good rebate included.

Anyway, it could be the PSU. I doubt it is the motherboard if you had 3 already.

I don't know, I was hoping that Micro Center would just look through the whole thing and figure it out, but maybe that is too much to ask. They did sell you the stuff so they should kinda owe it to you, though.

Anyway, I would really hate to see you go spend more money on a PSU and have that not be it.

That is kinda why I was hoping your IT guy might be able to get you that PSU soon. Maybe some RAM too, however unlikely that is.

 

[fantasticfrank]

The PSU I have now is a Seasonic brand, the M12 II is reasonably priced and there's literally no bad reviews on Newegg about it and it is recommended on Newegg too. Do you think I should get another one instead of that one? I'll be pretty surprised that after how good this PSU is supposed to be that it's already managed to die on me. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151095

I know better GPU's pull more power from the PSU, is the 620 watts not enough for the Radeon 7850? Should I get a higher wattage supply?

I don't know how helpful the IT department will be at my job because they only fix and repair basically one type of PC, so they have very low wattage supplies and I don't want to risk trying to power my mobo with those supplies. That guy was going to give me his personal supply so I'm sure he's optimistic about it.

And if I'm still having power issues like this, what other piece besides the PSU would my problem point to? Since it's probably highly unlikely my mobo is bad again and then if you don't think the supply is the problem either, then would a bad CPU not let my motherboard receive power or if I had a bad GPU or RAM would it give me trouble even trying to power the rig on?

I was able to start the rig up with no problems before the mobo driver install with the second mobo. Could older drivers over newer drivers conflict with my PSU, GPU, RAM, or the CPU? Ever since it tried to reboot it refuses to boot, the motherboard will not turn on at all. Would any of those besides the supply conflict with the motherboard startup?

And I didn't buy everything from microcenter, I just bought the mobo and CPU there. I got my PSU and everything else from Newegg.

 

[soundguruman]

Alright let me start by telling you I just recently put together a new gaming rig, my first major PC build. I used an Asus P8Z77V-PRO Mobo with an Intel i5 3570k CPU. Also got a Seasonic M12 II PSU, a HIS Radeon 7850 GPU, and two 4 GB G.Skill RAM. And I'm not OCing, but since the 3570k gets pretty hot, I also got a Hyper 212 aftermarket cooler. Well got all of my parts last Thursday, I got the CPU and Mobo from the microcenter, and got everything else from Newegg. I finished building it Thursday night, and everything powered on with no problems except I had the DDRAM surface mounted red LED on, and I wasn't getting anything to display on my monitor. After a little research and some help from people on the forum, I narrowed my problem down to the first three DDRAM slots on the Mobo. I could get the PC to start up with no problems with one stick of RAM in the 4th DDRAM slot on the Mobo, but one in any of the rest of them would cause it to hang up. I tried fixing the problem by downloading all of the most recent drivers on the PC for the Mobo from the Asus website, but that didn't fix the problem. The three slots were still bad, and the fourth one worked fine. Using just the fourth slot, I was able to use my PC all weekend with no problems, mostly to play the GW2 beta.

On Tuesday, I exchanged my Mobo with the bad DDRAM slots for a new one from microcenter. And Tuesday night, I went home and rebuilt my rig again. I built it much faster the second time, and I had the time and resources to make it nice and neat. I was so proud of myself, I had the thing running perfectly and it looked awesome.

Now yesterday when I got home from the bar, I wanted to set my rig all up, I got myself a new table for my monitor. But when I turned it on, I would always have to go through the setup because I was getting a CPU fan error. The mobo has the default low for the fan at 600 RPM and it was running at 590. Since I have two other case fans at almost 1000 RPM, I changed the default low to 500 to stop it from defaulting to setup mode on startup. I noticed I still had a disc in my drive, I loaded it up and it was my mobo drivers disc. I figured there could be some drivers I missed on the mobo so I opened it up, and hit install. I went through the motions and I walked away. When I came back my rig was off, and when I went to hit the power button, my motherboard attempted to start up and then powered off instantly. I opened the case to observe it further, the LED was lit green on my mobo, and then when I hit the power button it tried to boot, all the fans attempted to spin, and I could see the little surface mounted LEDs try to power on as well. Then it wouldn't respond to the power button at all. The only way I can try to give it power again is if I unplug the PSU and try again. And it would do the same thing, so now I'm stuck.

So I removed everything from the motherboard, removed it from my case and inspected for anything that looked out of the ordinary. Also did the same with CPU, the GPU, and the RAM. Didn't see anything that would make me think any of them are the problem. Then I tried to do a test boot out of the case just using the PSU, GPU, Mobo, and the RAM installed. Same thing is happening, it tries to boot up but within a second it powers off. Also tried resetting my CMOS when I was doing the test boot, (for the record, I never removed the battery)but still no luck, same result. Since I didn't go in and customize my drivers which I knew I should have done, but I was busy at the time and I figured installing recommended it wouldn't do any serious harm. I think the BIOS I updated originally from the Asus website was a newer driver than the one that was on the Asus CD. So by having the disc install an older driver over the newer driver, they conflicted and I crashed my Mobo. I'm not sure if that's exactly what happened, but that's the only thing I can think of. I ran the PC fine all weekend, and then ran it for a good hour on Tuesday night after I installed the new mobo. I don't know if you guys could tell me anymore, if someones encountered this problem before. If it is my mobo, I did buy a warranty, and it's still within 15 days of my original purchase date, so hopefully I'll be able to return it again. I just don't want to get a new mobo and it turns out it was a PSU problem, but I've got no other mobos or PSU to use to try to weed out one or the other.

I don't know if any of you have encountered something similar. I can't believe I made such an awful mistake, after all of the precaution I took as I built the rig and then rebuilt it and some software ends up crashing it. Well I appreciate everyone's help/feedback and I hope someone can help me or atleast have some answers. Thanks in advanced.

I have a comment, stop buying Asus boards.
Install a board from a reliable manufacturer such as Intel or Gigabyte.
Once you do this, your problems will be over.

 

[fantasticfrank]

My motherboard's probably not my problem, try reading everything instead of just quoting my entire first post.

 

[Raiddinn]

Asus isn't a bad brand, far from it. They sell more boards than any competitor does. People wouldn't buy their boards en masse if they sucked.

A Seasonic 620w should be enough to power a 7850 without even blinking.

However, you do have the dreaded day 2 death problem and I really don't know the solution to it.

If you can RMA the Seasonic PSU you already have, that might not be the worst idea.

 

[fantasticfrank]

I'm going to buy a replacement supply from Newegg, and once I can narrow it directly to the PSU I'll get an RMA for the other supply. I'm probably going to just buy another M12 II model because it's still reasonably priced and if you think 620 watts is enough then that one should be good enough.

And do you think there's any chance the problem could point back to the mobo or my CPU? Because if you suspect they do, maybe I'll take another microcenter trip today because trying to get there during the week sucks.

 

[Raiddinn]

I haven't seen a good CPU die without something like a power surge, and even then its almost never the CPU that does die, it is more the motherboard, video card, hard drive and stuff like that which the PSU plugs directly into.

Also, I can't really assume that two replacement boards are both bad.

If you think you can talk them into actually doing a real diagnosis and not a half ass one, then I would probably skip the trip at this point.

If you can talk them into doing serious testing for free then I would say its probably a good idea to do it.

 

[fantasticfrank]

I just purchased a replacement PSU from Newegg, another M12 II so hopefully that is my problem. I think I'll wait until I can rule out the supply before suspecting that it's another bad motherboard.

I wish I lived closer to another store that sells PC parts besides the microcenter. I should've dished out the cash and got a replacement supply when I was there yesterday. Hopefully I should probably get the PSU by mid-week, so if I have to go back to microcenter I'll go at the end of the week or wait until next weekend.

All these power problems, the only obvious fix would be the PSU, so I'm going to assume a new supply will fix my problem. And for whatever reason after using the PC for the whole weekend, the PSU just seemed to randomly die after a week at the exact same time I was downloading the drivers.

 

[fantasticfrank]

Left work and went to microcenter this morning, exchanged my motherboard and my CPU this time because I really think my processor's my problem. Exchanged my mobo just to rule out everything.

Also ordered that PSU Sunday, so I should be receiving that on Thursday. Even if it doesn't turn out my supply's my problem, I'll have a spare to use for testing down the road.

I was talking to one of the IT techs about my problem yesterday for a while and he believes the BIOS drivers may have conflicted with the processor and caused it to crash. Also he said if the LED on my board is green that means I have power and the board didn't fail the power boot. And the PC is basically crashing when the power switch is pressed/shorted, so that basically points to my CPU.

When I get home from work today, I'm going to give this build another go and I have a feeling that I'll have no problems. It seems like my motherboard was never my problem at all, and it was always my CPU. Thanks Raiddinn I appreciated the help.

And to the other people who viewed this post 350 times and didn't even try to help or offer any insight, thanks for nothing.

 

[Raiddinn]

Let me know how it turns out when you try everything again with the new parts.

 

[fantasticfrank]

Pardon my french, but FUUCKK!! I just tried another test boot and exact same result that I had before. When I hit the power switch on the supply, the LED is lit green. And when I short the power pins, the PSU fan starts up, the CPU fan spins for 15 seconds, and the GPU fan doesn't spin at all. And then the PSU fan stops spinning. Hopefully my PSU is going to be my problem then because this is crazy.

Also do you know anywhere I can get a new bracket and standoffs for my hyper 212 because I definitely left some of them on that motherboard. Maybe I'll just buy a new one, they weren't too much. And if I purchase another hyper 212, should I get some more sticks of RAM just to rule out absolutely everything because if this PSU isn't my problem, I've literally replaced everything but those and my GPU.

Now hopefully on Thursday when I get my replacement supply, my rig'll finally act like it used to. This sucks then