Asus M3A + AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+

[Liam_Christie]

Hello,

Got home tonight to discover my order from ebuyer was here, see below...


1 x Arctic Power 500W PSU With PCI-E 2x SATA, 20+4 ATX12V 8pin +12V Connectors - Retail Boxed
1 x Zalman ZM-STG1 Thermal Grease 125310 Invoiced Track £3.44 £3.44
1 x Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 Processor cooler
1 x ASUS M3A AMD 770 Socket AM2+ 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
1 x AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Socket AM2 (2.8GHz) L2 Cache 2MB (2x1MB) OEM Processor
1 x OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC
1 x Point Of View 8600GT 512MB DDR2 128-bit DVI VGA HDCP PCI-E Graphics Card
1 x Maxtor STM380215AS 80GB SATAII 7200RPM 2MB Cache

Decided to build it into a spare Full ATX case.. went together beautifully until i went to turn it on.

My problem is.. it wont POST. Everything has power, fans turning, cd drives can open but no POST and no output on the monitor. I've reseated everything, changed PSU to a 550Watt PSU ( which i know can power this rig ) tried to boot up with nothing on the board etc.. to no avail. I do have SOME PC knowledge but not loads.. what can be up? Anything im missing? Oh and i have reset CMOS too and i have made sure it came on the right jumper settings etc...

I dont have any other GFX card, nor do i have spare motherboard / processor to check.

Thanks

Liam

[Methious]

Couple of people including me saw this issue. First thing to try is unplug the power supply and pull the battery for a full minute. Don't use the cmos reset for this actually pull the battery. Then try for a post.

Then failing that, pull the video card and power up and listen for beeps, if your beeping that's a good thing, means it recognizes it needs a video card. You can do the same thing with the ram after the video card if you want.

I think what finally kicked mine into gear was removing the cpu cooler and cpu and powering on with no cpu in. But first let me tell you I had already pulled the board out of the case, stripped it of every thing, set it on top of the mobo box with the anti static bag under it, then powered on with nothing on the board after letting it set for an hour. (was peeved had to take a breather)

After powering on bare nothing but the power supply connected it started beeping at me. I slapped in the cpu and cooler, stuck some ram on it, plugged in a video card (still on the mobo box) gently plugged in a monitor and it posted. No problems with it posting since.

This same thing happened to Viperj, me and now you. I don't know what the fault is but it's across several boards. You might phone Asus tech support and see if they have some thing for you beyond what I did to kick it to life.

[Methious]

Here's what I got from the Asus site, pretty sparse help over there.

General help on no video on power on

Step1 :

Turn off the system power and unplug the power cord. Remove all PnP cards (Plug and Play) and cables including VGA, IDE, FDD, COM, USB, and external printer cable.

Step2 :

Confirm CPU and DRAM is inserted properly

Step3 :

Clear CMOS
(Please refer to motherboard user manual for jumper setting in clearing CMOS)

Step4 :

Plug the VGA card back to the system and also re-connect your monitor, mouse and keyboard. (connect ATX 20Pin cable to the mainboard. P4/K8 system will need to use ATX 12V 4Pin)

Step5 :

Turn on the power and make sure CPU, power supply and CPU fan is functioning.

[Liam_Christie]

Thanks for the reply and info..

I removed the CMOS battery for over a minute and tried the motherboard out of the case with nothing in it, no cables etc but i get no beeps whatsoever. Right now its with my local PC shop who are just going to test the individual parts for me and try to get it going using the hardware i put in. If it is a dodgy CPU / Motherboard i'll just RMA to ebuyer and wait :/

I would like to think i havent missed anything out, not being an expert but im not a novice as such. Just hope i get the PC up and running asap.

I didnt try the above steps you mentioned but when i get the stuff back from the PC shop and depending on what results they get ill do exactly that. I'll also post the outcome no matter what.

Liam.

[ibleet]

I would never send my systems to a PC shop. It just takes time and patience to diagnose each individual component yourself. There is plenty of information on the internet to get you started in the right direction. The info you got here from Methious alone, was invaluable.

For me, part of building my own rigs is to also learn what to do when things don't go smoothly. You don't get that kind of education by taking it to a repair shop. I also build my own to save money. It kills my savings by taking the system to a repair shop. Just my 2cp.

Good luck.

[Liam_Christie]

I would love not to send it in to the local PC shop, but giving that i have no other compatible components, CPU or Motherboard or VGA card then i cant test what one is away. Hopefully i'll get a concrete answer today and i can RMA the dodgy component.

Liam

[Liam_Christie]

Hey,

Id just like to thank all you guys for the help.. it seems the motherboard is fried and im wondering if its me thats done it or it came that way. Either way i've set an RMA with the company and they are picking it up tommorow.. and hopefully i'll have a working motherboard by friday :E

Thanks

Liam

[Methious]

Sorry to hear it's fried, that early in the game it's usually a factory defect and not any thing we did. I usually install them with surgical rubber gloves on to keep body oils and static away from them but a lot of people don't. Their like 10 for a buck here and at 20 cents an install it's keeps the equipment isolated from contaminants and body oils. Other than that I don't take any particular safety steps.

I do take each board and lay it out on a non-conductive surface (usually the anti static bag), seat the cpu and cooler, put in one stick of ram and a video card, then the power supply and short the power on pins to see if I get a post. It's just an extra 5 minutes but saves a lot of time if you do happen to get a bad board. Avoids the whole unplug every thing diagnostic, and when you go in case if it fails to post it's usually just a loose cable, or a grounding issue.

Gives you any grief come on back (heck come on back any way), and let us know if the next board is any better!

[Liam_Christie]

Im 99% sure it wasnt me that did it, there are no burn marks on the board, everything looks to be fine its just knackered.

The c ompany are picking it up today, so i should get one very soon and i tink i'll set it up out the case first as you suggest.

Thanks for your help and hopefully i'll be able to post on my new motherboard

[ibleet]

Glad to hear you got things sorted out!

[Liam_Christie]

I decided to purchase another motherboard while i wait on the company to see what they will be doing, and if im happy with the M2N-E SLI that i've just bought ( oh and its up and running \o/ ) i might just ask for a refund to the m3a.. so what do you guys think?

M3A or the M2N-E ?

[x4nit0s]

Hi all,

Great thread here, I'm in a similar situation myself, no video, any help is greatly appreciated.

M3A
5000+ Brisbane
BIOSTAR GeForce 7900GS
x2 Kingston ValueRAM 1GB
500w Antec

It seems to POST, I get numlock and I can soft reboot from keyboard, I.E. ctrl+alt+del, all fans/lights work, power button shuts it on/off instantly. Originally I was getting beep codes of two long, pause, four short however through the course of my trial and error I reset the CMOS, now it is two long tones i.E. bad date/time from the reset.

The strange part is that my monitor acts as thought it is being sent a signal, it comes out of standby mode, however nothing appears. My thought on this is that the mobo is PCI-e 2.0 however this is not a PCI-e 2.0 card, does anyone know if there are legacy issues there?

Wikipedia has the following to say about PCI-e 2.0:

PCIe 2.0 is completely backwards compatible with PCIe v1.x. Graphic cards and motherboards designed for v2.0 will be able to work with v1.1 and v1.0, and vice versa. In some rare cases it is possible that a PCI-E 2.0 card will not work correctly on a PCI-E 1.0a slot. This is only limited to certain video cards.

Also I have tested with another 5000+, another M3A, another 7900GS another DIMM of Kingston 533 and an Antec 380w with the same result, all equipment last known good of about a week ago, the board is sitting on cardboard with only the PSU/GPU/CPU/One DIMM installed right now (I am shorting the pins to start it)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Methious]

To the OP of the thread, the M3A is a much better board. If you've already RMA'd it I'd try for that. The M2N-E boards (I have one of those) seem to be experiencing a rather short life span, already had one die on me, and others I know with the board are getting the same thing. Also the voltage regulation on them is rather bad.

About the other post, I replied in the no video on post M3A thread, please avoid double posting it makes it hard to respond.