Motherboard curse

torin3 · Feb 6, 2008

I just can't have nice things.... :bang head

I got an Asus P5E x38 motherboard today. Took it home and planned for a nice sedate switchover. Got it swapped out and didn't even have to redo any of the water cooling loop.

Well it doesn't boot. Monitor never shows any signal. I don't have a speaker, so I can't hear if it is giving me beep codes. Turns on and off, the DVD drive opens and the light flashes but other than that...nothing.

Last motherboard had to be RMA'd to DFI. The 939s from DFI I had prior to that only one ever worked right out of the box...the other 3 all had to be babied up to a stable boot.

Oh well, I guess I'll pull the e6300 from my work computer, and the 5200FX that is old-style PCI, and a case speaker, and start trouble shooting after work. First 1 dimm, 5200fx and e6300 and see if I can get a boot.

Just really-really-REALLY annoying....

Even worse annoying than having to watch the "Star Wars Holiday Special".

cabose1227 · Feb 6, 2008

torin3 said:
"Star Wars Holiday Special"

wtk(what the krunk)???

grumperfish · Feb 6, 2008

^^^
You almost don't want to know. Worse than the Wicker Man. It features ~10 minutes of dialog... in wookie speech... with no subtitles. Also there's Art Carney and Jefferson Starship. Neither of these are good things.

As for the OP, good luck. Troubleshooting can be a pain. Is it possible that your RAM has conflicts with that particular board?

cabose1227 · Feb 6, 2008

when the case speaker is in you will hear the beep of ram problems!! I think....

Jolly-Swagman · Feb 6, 2008

Nothing worse than buying some thing and getting it all setup and then the dreaded ,,,Nothing,

Well hope you get it sorted.

Just had the courier come back to take my TR 120 Ultra X back that I finally received yesterday only to find that the base had a 20mm x 2mm deep gouge right across the centre, wasn't impressed at all, after waiting a month to get it.

Jolly-Swagman

torin3 · Feb 6, 2008

cabose1227 said:
wtk(what the krunk)???

If you haven't seen it yet....DON'T

grumperfish said:
^^^
You almost don't want to know. Worse than the Wicker Man. It features ~10 minutes of dialog... in wookie speech... with no subtitles. Also there's Art Carney and Jefferson Starship. Neither of these are good things.

As for the OP, good luck. Troubleshooting can be a pain. Is it possible that your RAM has conflicts with that particular board?

I spent all of my life until 3 weeks ago having avoided it...but you do favors for your friends even when you don't want to. On the plus side, after about a half an hour they realized it wasn't campy bad...it was just plain bad...Itchy's porn chair was scary...and Bea Aurthur's stalkerific scene was just creepy...I was able to turn it off...

I don't think my RAM is known to have problems with this board. Crucial Ballistix DDR2-PC8500 4x1GB

cabose1227 said:
when the case speaker is in you will hear the beep of ram problems!! I think....

Case speaker in, different video card, and same behavior, but no beeps at all...I'm going to try my dual core chip next...

Jolly-Swagman said:
Nothing worse than buying some thing and getting it all setup and then the dreaded ,,,Nothing,

Well hope you get it sorted.

Just had the courier come back to take my TR 120 Ultra X back that I finally received yesterday only to find that the base had a 20mm x 2mm deep gouge right across the centre, wasn't impressed at all, after waiting a month to get it.

Jolly-Swagman

Ouch...hope it gets sorted out for you soon...

johnflyons · Feb 6, 2008

New Board

You probably just need to update bios for wolfdale, but you
need the other cpu... thats my bet.

torin3 · Feb 6, 2008

Ok, I'm running out of options.

Runing it on a plane-jane 5200FX PCI card.
With a C2D E6300 chip.
4x1GB PC2-8500.

Fans come on. No BIOS beep at all (have case speaker plugged in) Board is caseless. It does nothing else. I've cleared the CMOS. I'm going to try running on stick of RAM in all the slots, but other than that, I've got nothing. I figured I'd try without card and without RAM as well, because it is supposed to generate POST beeps. If I can't get anything after that I figure it is time to RMA it. Can't think of what else it might be.

HELP?

torin3 · Feb 6, 2008

Ok, got it working.

Yes it does have a problem with Crucial Ballistix DDR2-PC8500 RAM.

Working fine with A-Data DDR2-PC6400 RAM.

ARGGHH!!! Nice RAM I can't use now...

johnflyons · Feb 6, 2008

Does it have a bios in it that supports wolfdale?

torin3 · Feb 6, 2008

johnflyons said:
Does it have a bios in it that supports wolfdale?

Don't know, but when I get a chance to check, I'll let you know. Currently reinstalling Vista.

It does say it supports 45nm cores.

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1873&l1=3&l2=11&l3=572&l4=0

Jolly-Swagman · Feb 6, 2008

Glad to hear you got it going, pity about the Crucial Balistix Sticks though.
Maybe and hopefully there might be a Bios update for them,

torin3 · Feb 6, 2008

Jolly-Swagman said:
Glad to hear you got it going, pity about the Crucial Balistix Sticks though.
Maybe and hopefully there might be a Bios update for them,

Well my Bios is at version 0203, and the current one is 0601, so I'm going to give it a flash and try the Ballistix again before I give up on them...

I'm just glad the A-Data arrived today, or I might not have thought to try them.

EDIT: Nope, 0601 doesn't let me boot with them. Crud... Several of the BIOS updates say they deal with RAM voltage issues.

cabose1227 · Feb 6, 2008

maybe one of the balistics was bad, did you tray each one sepratly?

torin3 · Feb 6, 2008

cabose1227 said:
maybe one of the balistics was bad, did you tray each one sepratly?

I didn't try each one separately, but I think you are at least partly right here. I tried them in another board and they didn't all work. There was at least one that if it was plugged in, it wouldn't boot. I've got it and another one I'm going to try in a board I know they used to work in. But yeah, some might work. However, I no longer have a matched set of 4. So I'm thinking I might get 2x2GB with room for expansion. The important thing to me is I've got it up and running. After that I can start experimenting.

jkeyser14 · Feb 6, 2008

I'm using Crucial Ballistics without any problem in mine. I was running mine at 1066Mhz, so I had to set the voltage to their rated 2.2v in order to get them to run at the proper speed.

If it helps, my bios is version 0203 I believe.

torin3 · Feb 6, 2008

jkeyser14 said:
I'm using Crucial Ballistics without any problem in mine. I was running mine at 1066Mhz, so I had to set the voltage to their rated 2.2v in order to get them to run at the proper speed.

If it helps, my bios is version 0203 I believe.

Were they rated 1066Mhz, or just running at 1066Mhz? I've got PC-8500 rated.

However, I'm thinking that I am indeed having a problem with a marginal stick, at least as a complicating factor. I've tried 1 stick of RAM in this board in all 4 slots at least 3 times. I wasn't checking and I could have gotten the same stick all 3 times, but I don't think so. So I might have 2 that don't work in this board. I'll check to see that they work in the board they came out of before I decide they are totally bad.

When I get a chance though (in a day or so) I'll try all 4 sticks one at a time to make sure.

One odd thing though...I never got the beeping that said bad RAM...

cabose1227 · Feb 6, 2008

No beep?!?!?! I always get beeps and it drives me crazy! you are lucky.

grumperfish · Feb 7, 2008

Ahh nailed this one

It's more likely that just one or two of the sticks are bad though if jkeyser14 is running ballistix in his board. Hopefully this is the case and you can just RMA the bad stick(s).

jkeyser14 · Feb 7, 2008

torin3 said:
Were they rated 1066Mhz, or just running at 1066Mhz? I've got PC-8500 rated.

However, I'm thinking that I am indeed having a problem with a marginal stick, at least as a complicating factor. I've tried 1 stick of RAM in this board in all 4 slots at least 3 times. I wasn't checking and I could have gotten the same stick all 3 times, but I don't think so. So I might have 2 that don't work in this board. I'll check to see that they work in the board they came out of before I decide they are totally bad.

When I get a chance though (in a day or so) I'll try all 4 sticks one at a time to make sure.

One odd thing though...I never got the beeping that said bad RAM...

Mine are the same model, PC-8500 1066MHz. I'm using 4x1GB with no problems. If you ever do get them to work, the voltage needs to be set at 2.2v for them in the bios, otherwise the bios will most likely see them as being 800MHz (even says so somewhere in specs).

Also, check your bios, see what version you are running.

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