Corrupted bios or Damaged Motherboard

[Lochekey]

So I think I may have corrupted my bios or damaged my motherboard. Hoping someone can give me some troubleshooting tips before I go through the RMA process. I am having problems with my gigabyte z97x soc force motherboard. I originally experienced the trouble with my Pentium g3258 installed but the same problems happens with my it 4690k.

So the story.

I have been using this setup to bench for the rookie rumble lately and pushing it pretty hard. The problems started overnight while benching and my system was sitting outside at an ambient temp of -2. I was running hwbot prime and got a bsod due to pushing ram timings. Upon restart I loaded default settings and booted into Windows and noticed my multiplier was set at 42 instead of 32 and score was at 1.32 vcore. I went back to bios and verified that everything was set to auto but the voltage and multiplier was still wrong. I proceeded to pay this no heed and continued trying to bench. I was unsuccessful at doing anything as I keep receiving stop 101 and 124 codes randomly even after manually setting stock multiplier and voltage. I also lost the ability to raise bulk past 100 or use bulk straps as either action causes my system to not even boot to bios. I listed my troubleshooting steps below but was unsuccessful even after switching to my i5 processor. The i5 is defaulting to the same multiplier and vcore.

Things I have tried.

Backup bios
Clear cmos
Clear cbat
Reload bios
Fresh Windows install
And finally did my frustration dance.

So now I'm here and hopefully someone can help.

Thanks lochekey.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Check pins in the socket.
If it looks ok just RMA the board.

 

[Lochekey]

I was afraid of that hopefully gigabyte is good to deal with

 

[Mandrake4565]

So you flashed the BIOS or you just switched from the stock to the backup?

If you flashed the BIOS and it's still happening on 2 different processors with a fresh windows install it does sound like there is an issue with the board.

How long have you let the board sit before trying to start it up again, it's possible you had some condensation get under the heatsinks and such.

 

[Lochekey]

Flashed bios from usb in addition to trying on board back up bios. I have not tried starting it up yet today as I was letting it dry. I did all my troubleshooting as well as the cpu swap while it was outside last night to avoid condensation.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Flashed bios from usb in addition to trying on board back up bios. I have not tried starting it up yet today as I was letting it dry. I did all my troubleshooting as well as the cpu swap while it was outside last night to avoid condensation.

If you hadn't taken any precautions against condensation, it is possible that you did have some and I've seen strange things happen when a board gets damp/wet. Let it sit at least till tomorrow and then start it up and see. If it's still persisting and checking the pins like Scotty mentioned isn't the issue, it sure sounds like the board is having issues.

 

[Johan45]

I was just going to say it might just be condensation. Water in places it doesn't belong can do weird things. I'd take the battery out and let it sit in a warm dry place for a day. Even hit it with a good hairdryer to give it a head start

Oh man ninja'd by the Yawker.

 

[Lochekey]

Well I have had the whole thing sitting next to a heater vent with a fan blowing into it overnight. I will probably take it apart later today and inspect it. I will report back with my findings.

 

[Johan45]

Make sure you take the CPU out of it. That's likely where the water is

 

[Nebulous]

I would use a can of compressed air to blast out the water trapped in the socket also just to be on the safe side.

 

[Lochekey]

so quick update on this. Got everything good and dry and then inspected and can find no physical evidence of damage or shorting. The bios is still acting up but it is not constantly BSODing on me though. Gonna try and limp through the next few days to get some scores in for the RR and then I guess it is RMA time for this board.

 

[Mandrake4565]

That stinks.

 

[Lochekey]

Yes it does, at least the board did not completely fry though. Guess this is gonna force me to play with the i7-860 that has been collecting dust.

 

[Mr.Scott]

so quick update on this. Got everything good and dry and then inspected and can find no physical evidence of damage or shorting. The bios is still acting up but it is not constantly BSODing on me though. Gonna try and limp through the next few days to get some scores in for the RR and then I guess it is RMA time for this board.

I had a feeling.

 

[Woomack]

I made 5 RMA on these Gigabyte boards ( Z87/Z97 OC/SOC as they're about the same ) because of similar behaviour. Sometimes couldn't boot at all, sometimes BIOS was dead. Even when I sold last of them then guy who bought it, made RMA about a month later for similar issues ( I got mail from gigabyte by mistake ). Dual BIOS isn't helping much on these boards.