Asrock AM3NF3-VSTA front panel question..

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Shadowlands
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Asrock AM3NF3-VSTA front panel question..

Post by Shadowlands »

Hi, new user here with a dumb question.. I've bought the ASrock mobo and am trying to connect the power button etc from the case to the motherboard.. I thought I had it last night, I managed to get the machine powered up (With no picture to the monitor but thats another AGP question ENTIRELY), but none of the other buttons or lights worked so I tried it again this morning, and well, it was worse, it'll power up for half a second (I've got coloured fans in the case so can see it power up) then power down straight away.. I've taken a picture of the leads and a grab from the manual showing the connector on the mobo, if anyone can work out what goes where I'd REALLY appriciate it! :)

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ibleet
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Re: Asrock AM3NF3-VSTA front panel question..

Post by ibleet »

My Asus motherboard came with a handy little plastic gadget called a Q-connector, which made plugging in the front-panel power switch, power and hard-drive activity LEDs, and other humdrum-but-essential connectors very easy.

Aren't they all marked? From the image and the embedded schematic, they all looked marked. Mine were all clearly marked, and the Q-connector made it easy to plug it all in despite the size of my huge fingers. Sorry I couldn't be more help, but if you take a picture of the spot on the motherboard where the actual PINS are, it would help.

Now time for my dumb question for you...Why on earth would you buy a motherboard with an AGP slot when PCI-E is the current standard? A lot of PCI-E motherboards are cheap and so are the PCI-E graphics cards. Even if you have an AGP card, its high time to consider an upgrade. Money is the issue? :mrgreen:
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Methious
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Re: Asrock AM3NF3-VSTA front panel question..

Post by Methious »

Read this reply completely and understand it before you go dinking around with the board.

If your having a power up/power down issue with an Asrock MOBO, just connect the power connector from the case to the MOBO, it goes on the connector toward the upper right of your picture, named pwrbtn# and the ground to the right of it. For the time being don't connect any thing else. Make darn sure your CPU is seated correctly, make sure it has a thin layer of CPU thermal compound on top of it (if the cpu cooler doesn't have thermal tape on it), make sure the cpu fan is plugged in and turning. Then try power on with nothing else connected (you may have a led connected to the reset)

Make sure you have a motherboard speaker plugged in so you can listen for beeps they can indicate problems through beep codes. The speaker connector is not listed on your diagram.

If your getting a power up, then a power down immediately it's a good indication some thing is seriously wrong. (CPU overheat, wrong cpu, bad MOBO or bad CPU) Asrock when they run are a good budget board, but I've had 2 or 3 come out of the box dead.

Back to your question.

Power LED goes top left of the block (for a beginner if you put the power led connector there then it doesn't light up, reverse the plug, meaning pull the plug, turn it around and plug it back in, it's just a LED your not going to hurt it, make sure when you reverse a plug the machine is powered down though.

Hd LED bottom left of the block, if it doesn't flicker when you power on, power back down and reverse the plug.

Reset switch goes bottom right of the block, but leave one pin on the end below the empty space open cause it's a dummy pin.

when your looking at the block, have your manual out, to the page the block is pictured on, and make sure it's oriented to the same direction the block is, look for the one missing pin (top right of the pic) and make sure the picture has the missing pin faced the same way.

When it comes down to it though this might be a dead board, just to make sure though, check the Jumper one pin ( JP1 ) it's a block of 3 pins a lot of times asrock boards come with JP1 the jumper will cover pins 2 and 3, (the jumper is usually blue, red, or white) pins 1 and 2 need to be covered before the asrock board will post. If it's not a dead board I bet pins 2-3 are shorted (asrock did this on a lot of boards as it saves wear and tear on the battery) Good luck with it, If it's still giving you fits repost and I'll check back on you sunday afternoon.

(make sure that agp card is plugged in to otherwise the board reads no video and gives a beep error)

laters
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