FIXED: New PC build won't stay on longer than 5 seconds!!!!!

[Noahtuck]

Okay, i'm curious...

This is something i have never done before...

What if i fired it up without a CPU on the mobo ??

Would it hurt anything even if i did not get into bios ??

[jagabo]

You won't get to the BIO without a CPU. About the only thing you can tell without a CPU is a power to ground short or dead PSU.

[Noahtuck]

Hmmm....

well i was just wondering if the mobo would stay powered up for any length of time without a CPU & without hurting the mobo.....

thought it might help narrow it down to a certainty that it's the CPU, for whatever reason, overheating (i doubt) or just bad and making the mobo shut down.

[gll99]

If a bare bones boot doesn't solve the problem then I'd look at the way the board is mounted and also make sure the right power and peripheral connectors are installed to the right pins. 5 seconds is very fast. I'd also be concerned that the right screws and spacers were used for mounting and that nothing is touching a solder point or the case.

I know by now you are royally frustrated but the only way is to go back to square one. I'm sure it's hard to remember every combination you've tried

If it was me at this point, I'd hook the motherboard up to a psu outside the case with minimum components as a starting point. That would eliminate accidental grounding issues etc.... If the condition persists I would swap out or remove the few add_ons such as keyboard, mouse, ram, vidcard, hdd etc. At this early stage of out of the case testing, every add_on component is a suspect to me even the monitor cable, power cord and wall socket.

[Noahtuck]

Oh believe me, i have tried every combination possible

The first time and this time after replacing the mobo.

Pretty much everyone here has given me other things to try, but it's till no go....

The only thing i have not done is firing it up outside the case, which i will try saturday.

My work bench is a nice big thick wood bench mounted to the basement wall, it could hold a couple of V8's!!

So i will not have any accidental grounding issues.
I have done it before when testing stuff, but not because of grounding issues, just because it was always easier to throw a mobo/cpu on the bench and plug it in.

But i doubt that is the problem seeing how it worked to start with then died on the first Mobo, which i am now on the 2nd seeing as i thought that was the problem.

I already tried diff. keyboards, mice, ect the first time, this time also but even with just the mobo and cpu, with & without ramm, it just shuts right off in under 5 seconds.


But i am gonna try it outside the case tomorrow and see what happens.... i will report back tomorrow....

Also, so does anyone know for sure if i fire up just the mobo with or without ramm if it will harm the mobo ??
I figure if it stays on without the CPU, that has to be the problem.

But seeing as this is my 2nd mobo i don't wanna fry it for sure
Because i'm assuming now the 1st one was not the problem.

[johns0]

Starting up a mb without the cpu wont hurt it,neither will starting it up without ram,even without a videocard.

[budz]

IMHO return that CPU to where ever you bought it from. It reminds me deadrats problem with his CPU as well.

[redwudz]

I've ran MBs without RAM with no problems. Nothing happens except BIOS beeps for no RAM. I had a similar problem to yours a couple of days ago with a MB that shut down in about half a second and did this from the time it was installed in the case. The fans would take about a 1/4 of a turn and then nothing.

It was caused on mine by a SP/DIF connector that was creating a direct short of the +5VDC rail. I even tried a second PS, pulled the boards, unplugged all drives, and pulled the RAM. The connector was under a difficult-to-remove tuner card and that was the last thing I pulled. It was a unkeyed connector that I had installed one pin off. But if that were your problem, you would have likely found that by now with what you have tried. I was about to RMA the MB for a second time when I located the wayward connector. The first MB RMA was for a different problem. I was lucky that the PS's shut down instead of causing any damage to the MB, CPU or the PS's.

I don't think you have anything to lose at present by trying the MB out of the case. I was lucky to have a second compatible CPU and MB, and substituting those would have been my next step. If a CPU has a internal short, you could have a similar shutdown, but no way to diagnose it except to substitute the CPU in another MB. I think you will probably end up RMAing the CPU.

[Noahtuck]

Starting up a mb without the cpu wont hurt it,neither will starting it up without ram,even without a videocard.

Yeah i did not think it would hurt the mobo without ramm, i was more wondering about anything else getting hurt with no CPU in it, like maybe the ramm being hurt or the mobo itself.

I have never had a reason to or thought about firing up a mobo with no CPU on it.

IMHO return that CPU to where ever you bought it from. It reminds me deadrats problem with his CPU as well.

See!!
There ya go.... simple & straight to the point!!
Best of all... you agree with me :P

That was my plan from the start, i just want to exhaust every possible aspect before sending it back and waiting ANOTHER 5 days
And i'm not gonna be sending anything out until monday so i have the weekend to play and test.
And i'm gonna have to pull it all out anyways so i'm gonna do what gl99 suggested & try it out on the work bench.

I'll tell ya what though.... i am running a 2.0ghz AMD with a gig & a half of ramm, and the first hour this dual core 2.5ghz with 4gb of dual channel ramm was actually running, i could see a big difference in just small things running 8)

I was all stoked to try my new sata pioneer and some games with my 1gb BFG video card
Just my luck... i could build or upgrade 4 systems for friends and have no problems, then my turn... BAMM!!!!
I was trying to work withing a budget also, and the mobo within my overall budget was either this one, or an ASUS & another one, i don't remember offhand, but the others only had 2 sata ports and this biostar has 4, and it has a ton of good reviews from people that have bought it and are using it so....

I had only installed my standard XP pro disc without thinking about it, then besides the weird shit it was doing, which made me think my PSU was not giving enough power to everything, then after i reformatted the SATA drive and started to reinstall my XP 64bit buh bye....

[Noahtuck]

@ redwudz
Yep...

The first thing i thought of was the PSU, remember that ??
Thanks you for the jinx!!
:P


But after already ordering another new one, i tested it in another system and it worked fine...
Oh well, i needed another new extra one anyways...

Thank you again!!!


In all these 10+ years of building tons of my own systems & upgrading them, besides working on other peoples, i have only ever had 1 mobo go bad, one CPU (my fault LOL!!) and tons of ramm (usually only after they were pretty old, only ever had one bad from purchase) and an occasional PSU.

And i will NOT take anything to the places around me to be checked.... lets see, there is the Tard Brigade... errr... i mean Best Buy.....

And this other pc shop where i'm pretty sure they don't have a F'n clue!!

The mobo i had go bad, i knew it was either the mobo or the cpu, i took the cpu down to the shop by me, asked them to test it.

The tech proceeds to open a brand new mobo and put my cpu in it on the work bench.....

He hooks up the PSU to it, takes a screw driver to the jumpers/pins on the mobo to turn it on......

POOF!!!!!!!

I hear this pop and see a poof of smoke!!!!!!!!

And the dude goes yep... your cpu is fried... as he had just fried a brand new mobo!!
I remember thinking yep.... if it was not fried before it sure as hell is now!!!!!


Well, i bought a new mobo, not from them, and that cpu from 2 years ago he said was fried is still going strong!!!!!

I always wondered what he told the boss after he fried that new mobo

[MidnightMike]

I read your post and everyone elses, could I suggest 2 tricks ?
Open up your case once more to see if you seated mobo properly on the mounting screws.
If you have a friend that has a am2 cpu used try that and see what happens, your new cpu could glitched up badly.
Last before you try installing windows again look for a bios upgrade for your mobo and look for well known issues with your board online.

[Noahtuck]

Ummm.... yeah......
8)

[ocgw]

except once i forgot to plug the CPU fan in, started it up and about 20-30 seconds later... BUH BYE CPU!!

ouch. that's the difference between an intel and an amd. intels only slow down then shut down when they overheat, amd's turn to ashes. i have a video somewhere of the comparison, it was an eyeopener.

modern mobos won't boot at all without ram. usually you'd get 1 long beep or repeated long beeps.

every amd mobo I have ever had shuts down when the cpu gets hot

btw I had a mobo do the same thing, the back of the mobo was touching the case and was grounding out, I put some tape behind the mobo and it started up and ran fine

ocgw

peace

[zing269]

Have you tried a different CPU fan? I recently replaced the fan on my wife's PC and had a similar problem. It turned out that the new fan was not sending the RPM signal and so the mb decided the fan was not working and shut down to preserve the CPU.

[Noahtuck]

Have you tried a different CPU fan? I recently replaced the fan on my wife's PC and had a similar problem. It turned out that the new fan was not sending the RPM signal and so the mb decided the fan was not working and shut down to preserve the CPU.

Thanks for the idea!!

I tried that just now, no go

Plugged the main CPU fan into another fan socket on the board & plugged another known to be good CPU fan/hs into the main CPU fan socket, same thing.

[Noahtuck]

Well,

I took the mobo out of the case, does the same thing, turn it on, it shuts right off.

I was pretty sure nothing was grounding out because it has some pretty tall standoffs/risers.

I pulled the CPU off, fired it up & it is staying on.

I have the CPU HSF sitting next to it & a case fan and everything is staying turned on.

It has to be with the CPU.

[minidv2dvd]

i know you probably can't joke about it yet, but it is an amd quad core reject they disabled 2 cores in to get someone to buy it........

[Noahtuck]

have you tried using only 1 stick of ram?
also is your cpu on the supported list for that mobo?
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/mb/cpu_support.php?S_ID=315

And actually, this is my mobo, not the one you listed,

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/mb/cpu_support.php?S_ID=370

[Noahtuck]

i know you probably can't joke about it yet, but it is an amd quad core reject they disabled 2 cores in to get someone to buy it........

Where do you get that ??

Have a link ??

I'd like to find out about that.....

I have read several reviews by people who are using it and i never saw anything about it being a quad reject ?

[minidv2dvd]

they were even selling some as tri cores for awhile... if only one core was whacky. i'll look around for a link.

[minidv2dvd]

here's one on the x3.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=447&pgno=2

and hers's one on how x2s were unlocked to find the 2 hidden cores.
http://www.techpowerup.com/92330/Athlon_X2_7750_BE_Unlocked_to_Quad-Core.html

[Noahtuck]

here's one on the x3.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=447&pgno=2

and hers's one on how x2s were unlocked to find the 2 hidden cores.
http://www.techpowerup.com/92330/Athlon_X2_7750_BE_Unlocked_to_Quad-Core.html

Hmmm... interesting, the 2nd one actually say's what number but they talk about the Black Edition, which i know is different from mine.

And in the first article they really don't state my model CPU and talk about the triple core having only a 2mb cache, where mine is listed as having a 3mb cache.

Thanks, i'm going to bookmark those and look into it farther.

I remember when i ran CPUZ and i don't recall seeing it listed as a quad as stated in the 2nd article but i won't be able to check it again until i get a new CPU.

But that would be cool to even unlock one core & make it a running triple 8)

It would be nice to find some more specific details on how & what was used.
And mine is a 64 and i read that XP SP3 does not support 64bit and in that photo & article they are running XP SP3 ?

[minidv2dvd]

all cpu's are 64bit now. they can run on 32 bit or 64 bit os's. 32 bit xp sp3 will run on any amd or intel 64 bit chip just fine.

the give away that a chip is a disabled amd quad is the power consumption. if an x2 with the same buss speed and almost the same clock speed is listed as using as much power as an x4 it has 4 cores. for some unknown reason the chip can't use the 2 disabled cores but they still draw power. i.e. the 7550 x2 is most likely a x4 9600/9650 with the same 95 watt power draw. the quads are rated lower in GHZ for their slowest core.

[budz]

^^^I'm so lost as to the info on AMD quads. Good information though for Noahtuck.

[redwudz]

My understanding was that the weak cores were disabled on chip during the manufacturing. AMD isn't the only one that does that. Intel has done similar with some of their CPUs, but I can't find the link about that. I suspect if you could enable them, they might lower the efficiency of the rest of the cores and not be any improvement in performance.

[minidv2dvd]

intel had some good schemes. like the early 286/386/486's that sold with or without math coprocessors built-in. they would cut a leg off a cpu to disable the math coprocessor for the without's. then if you wanted to add a math coprocessor they would sell you another complete chip to put in the "coprocessor" spot. the motherboard disabled the first cpu and only ran the second.

[jagabo]

All CPU manufacturers have down-binned individual processors since day one. That's how they maximize yield (and profits) from each wafer.

[Video Head]

intel had some good schemes. like the early 286/386/486's that sold with or without math coprocessors built-in. they would cut a leg off a cpu to disable the math coprocessor for the without's. then if you wanted to add a math coprocessor they would sell you another complete chip to put in the "coprocessor" spot. the motherboard disabled the first cpu and only ran the second.

Intel has been doing that for a long time. Sometimes they didn't even have time in production to do the downgrade properly and sold processors with the full feature set still capable of being enabled. They assumed that most users would never figure out to try. Kind of like buying a VW hybrid and when you look under the hood you realize that they wedged a detuned Mercedes FO-108W engine into it.

[DarrellS]

I had a friend way way back in highschool that had a VW bug with a Porsche engine in it. I've seen Beetles, Karmann Ghias and Corvairs with small block chevy engines.

[budz]

^^^Whoas! Karmann Ghias brings back memories of my youth!!!!