Asus Crosshair V Formula AM3 - Status Lights OK, But Board Is Busted?

[Lordhumungus]

Hey folks, hoping with the metric ton of collective knowledge on these forums that you all might be able to help me with something.

To keep it short and sweet, I have someone who bought a motherboard from me on ebay and I believe is trying to scam me by filing a claim with ebay stating that it didn't work within 1 hour of it being delivered to his mailbox.

Without going into the crazy details I have been trying to get information from the buyer to help troubleshoot the issue, if in fact something is wrong, but he refuses to provide details such as exact make/models (which is super suspect) beyond vague mentions of having "thousands of dollars worth of hardware" that he tested it with.

All of that said, I am attempting to gather some more info about one of his claims

Specifically, he says that all of the status and diagnostic indicators on the board point to everything being just fine, but that the board will still not boot or show any kind of video signal. His supposition is that the board is so damaged that it can't even properly give status indication.

Now, for my part in all this, I know for certain the board was working fine before sending it to him as I booted, got into the BIOS ran some memtest and similar diagnostics before stripping it down and sending it to him. I saw 0 indications of anything wrong with the board.

I didn't personally own this board or use it for any extended period of time, so i am willing to concede that it is POSSIBLE that something is wrong that I either didn't catch or something happened in transit, but there are many other aspects of his claim which are also suspect.

With all that in mind, I'd like to answer the following question. Has anyone heard of/seen a situation with this or any motherboard where the status indicators all seemed to indicate everything was fine, but the board would not boot/POST or anything else?

Any insights you folks can provide would be greatly appreciated and the more info the better as I am trying to build a case for how this guy is clearly trying to scam me and rip me off.

Thanks!

 

[RLGL]

Refund and take the board back. Doesn't matter the situation you are the one that gets screwed.

 

[Lordhumungus]

I appreciate the advice, that's definitely the smart choice, but as I said in another thread I feel pretty strongly that I need to stand up for what is right here, even in the face of likely taking a hit myself.

 

[LTC8K6]

You won't get anywhere even if you are right, imo.

Your time and effort have value.

Cut your losses and move on.

 

[Lordhumungus]

I put this in my other thread as well, but I decided to just allow the refund and move on and let the universe deal with this clown. FEELS SO DIRTY THOUGH.

Edit: I'm still interested in the answer to the question though.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The user's manual for my Gigabyte B350M Gaming 3 board, indicates that it has four LED diag lights, but when I tried installing my new Ryzen 2400G APU, none of them lit up. Board zombie-posted, acted like it was dead, but booting. No beep, no diag lights, no POST video over the HDMI, nothing.

When I finally got my older Ryzen R5 1600 CPU in there, and a dGPU, to flash the BIOS, the board booted. I didn't check the diag lights. I flashed to the newest stable BIOS version, F21, and re-installed the APU, and this time, it booted fine. But still, no diag lights with the APU.

If you sold him an AM4 board, and he's trying to use an APU with it, if it doesn't have the newest BIOS, or possibly even if it does, it may not boot properly, it may "Zombie boot", where everything gives the indication of a successful POST (fans and board LEDs, like the audio trace lighting) come on and stay on, just no POST beep nor POST video.

One other cause of a "Zombie Boot", on a non-AM4 board, is forgetting to connect the ATX12V cable. The fans will come on and spin up, including the CPU fan, just no POST.

 

[Lordhumungus]

Yeah, I mean there are all kinds of troubleshooting steps I could go through if the guy weren't a complete lunatic and would actually respond like a normal human, but alas, he will not, which is why I am looking for help here.

Edit: The answer doesn't actually "matter" anymore in the sense that I decided to just refund him, but I'm still curious for my own knowledge.