CPU and GPU fans spin up briefly, then stops - this repeats infinitely

Faershaun

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Feb 13, 2013
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Hi,

I have an old HP DC7600 which has one PCI Express x16 slot. (ooooold Pentium 4 machine)
I have an old random graphics card which has worked just fine in this slot.
- I got hold of a slightly better card - Asus EAH4850 Matrix (HD4850 basically) with 512MB ram.

I can boot the pc up just fine;
- without any PCI E card
- with the older misc card

I cannot boot it up with the HD4850, and all the fans in the PC starts spinning - then stops - then starts (ad infinitum).
There is nothing on the screen, not even a POST message or BIOS, F-button prompt or anything...
- if I use the onboard VGA plug after taking out the HD4850 it works just fine.
- I am 99% sure the GPU is fine, since I took it out of a working rig.

In search of an answer or solution I tried getting a 450W new PSU (brand: XFX). - The GPU has 1x6pin power connector, and draws around 225w from what I can tell from the specs.

However, I am down to this either being a short somewhere on the Motherboard - or something I haven't thought of.
There are no obvious shorts, and I have tried semi-breadboarding (the DC7600 does have the motherboard mounted on a little metal plate easily removed from the rest of the tower).

Any ideas would be welcome. I suspect a faulty Motherboard, but I don't fancy throwing money at one after getting a new PSU if it could be avoided..

Thank you in advance :)
 
Solution
did you check if the other pc had onboard video ports. sometimes when you swap video cards the onboard gpu becomes the first video output. if not...looking and bad card.

Faershaun

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Feb 13, 2013
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Thank you for your reply!

I forgot to mention I have tested without RAM and with the RAM (I have 4 sticks I have tried all) - The result is the same.

I have never seen this kind of behaviour from any of my builds - the fans just keep turning on/off with 1-2 second intervals.
There is never any signal on the screen. Nor any kind of POST message.
I can also boot just fine as long as I take out the GPU, it even works with the older slower GPU (some random Nvidia card).
As far as I can tell there is nothing wrong with the hard drives, RAM & CPU.
I even went as far as redoing the thermal paste - the problem remains (and I could still boot with the old card and without one).
 

Faershaun

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Feb 13, 2013
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Oki, so I decided to try and not have any RAM in at all. Then I get the standard beep code for missing/faulty RAM. The videocard spins up very nicely. And as soon as I put any of the RAM back in - I am back to the infinite loop of spinning up the fans and turning them off again.
 
some of the older hp pc mb had a video card ram max size of 512k. it was a bios issue with hp and not a video card vendor issue. hp did not fix this issue as the pc were old when this issue was found. i would check to see if your mb has the newest bios if the newest bios does not fix the issue ask someone for a newer video card with 512m of ram.
 

michel1980

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Feb 12, 2013
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Did you try other modules, seems to be that there corrupted/broken :??:
 

Faershaun

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Feb 13, 2013
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- I have a 1kW PSU in my normal setup. I guess I can give that a try.
The standard PSU is around 350W, so I suppose 450W could be a tad low.

- I found this old test, which shows less than 100W for the CPU though.. not entirely sure it is similar to the one tested. It is a 3GHz, and a P4 though. Not overclocked, just stock.

I have tested the RAM in other setups and they seem to work just fine.
I'll post again when I have tried using the 1kW PSU.
Any other suggestions are, obviously, still welcome :)

Thank you!
 

Faershaun

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Feb 13, 2013
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So far this seems like a likely issue. I flashed the BIOS to 1.61 (latest from HP's support site) earlier today before putting in the GPU.
 

Faershaun

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Feb 13, 2013
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Oki, so I connected an external PSU to the card alone - it still decided to do the dance of on/off on all fans in the PC.

- I'm starting to think something has happened to the GPU..
 

Faershaun

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Feb 13, 2013
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Update: I borrowed a second PC to test the GPU in..
So it turns out when I took out the card that was already in that computer, and replaced it with the one I had been using in the DC7600 - I had no signal what-so-ever. Normal boot, POST etc. but no image on screen.
- The fans spun normally in the entire computer, GPU included..