Corsair H80 not cooling + black screen when accessing BIOS on P9X79

marchz

Honorable
Aug 2, 2012
4
0
10,510
Hi everyone,

I'm currently running into some issues with my new PC build. Here is my setup:
MB: Asus P9X79 Pro
CPU: i7-3820 3.6Ghz
Cooler: Corsair H80
RAM: Corsair dominator GT DDR3
Graphic card: Nvidia GTX-680

Upon the first boot, a ran into the "CPU over temperature" message. The two Fan of the H80 were running at full speed. So I disassembled the whole cooling unit again, cleaned the old thermal paste, added some new, and made sure that all screws were correctly tightened (as far as I can go without damaging the screws head), in the order specified in the manual. But the problem was still here at the next boot.

I decided to look into the BIOS to get at least an idea at which temperature/voltage the CPU was running. And here comes problem #2: I cannot get into the BIOS. Each time I try to open it (either by pressing "del" at system boot or by pressing F1 when the temperature warning shows up) I get a black screen, and all the leds of my keyboard go off as well. After maybe 40sec, the PC auto-shutdown (probably because of the heat)...

I've updated the BIOS to the latest available version... Without improvement.

I have to say that mounting the cooler seems considerably easier than what I was used to. Maybe I missed something... But still, if the temperature is so high that it shutdown automatically after less than a minute, couldn't this be a sign that the pump isn't working at all? As far as I can tell, the water conduit remains cold, and I could not hear any noise, or vibration, coming from the CPU cover, is that normal?

At the same time, I'm nearly sure that even without a working fan I should be able to enter the bios...

Currently I'm strongly considering returning under RMA the cooler and the motherboard... What do you think?

Any help much appreciated.
Marc H.
 

marchz

Honorable
Aug 2, 2012
4
0
10,510
Ok... That was really stupid.

I used the wrong screws to mount the pumping unit. I watched 3 youtube videos, read a post where the guy did exactly the same mistake, but I managed to use the wrong screws.

What puzzled me is that using the right screw, it seems impossible to keep in place the cruciform metal part at the back of the motherboard as depicted in the first step of the manual... In addition, the perspective view of the screws was a bit ambiguous to me.

Anyway, no more message, and the system seems this time stable enough, although the fans still spin relatively fast.

Now, I reset the CMOS, just in case. At the next boot, I had the habitual message following the clear CMOS procedure, inviting me to go into the BIOS, which I did, and... I still have nothing but a black screen just as when I booted the first time.

I know that this MB features a BIOS with some fancy graphics. Could it be some problem with my graphic card? I can still access the raid configuration screen (which is using a traditional bi-chrome UI using ctrl-M at startup), but that's all.

Thanks,
Marc H.
 

marchz

Honorable
Aug 2, 2012
4
0
10,510
I forgot to mention that at each start it produces one single, short, beep.

The description given by the manual is:
- VGA detected.
- Quick boot set to disabled.
- No keyboard detected.

I just couldn't figure if the beeping means one or all the specified causes. Using another keyboard on any usb port still produces the same pattern. And since the screen turns black every time I try to enter the bios, it means that it somehow react to keyboard event.

Any suggestion?

 

marchz

Honorable
Aug 2, 2012
4
0
10,510
Ok, I decided to give it a try, and I installed windows 7, just to check if I can see anything with the tools from ASUS.

Verdict: everything seems fine, the CPU cooler is running with normal temperature and voltage, and the embedded devices (audio, NIC, ...) seem to function OK as well.

The mother board seems fully functional, except that I cannot get into the bios on boot. Great. I'm not sure yet if I want to return it to the shop...

The H80 pump however started making some noise, this is very similar to what is experimented by a lot of other users. In my case, the fan were also louder as normal... Remounting the fan as exhaust instead of intake reduced somehow the noise, but the pump remains a problem.

In 12 years this the 5th PC I built. But this is the second time in two years that more than one of the 6 components required to build the machine are defect in some way, this is way too much considering than these products are not cheap. Is this some kind of global trend?

Anyway, thanks for the help.