I'm trying to salvage my friends tower that has been sitting in my other room for months, and turn it into a mining rig. It is an ASUS m4a79xtd evo motherboard w/4 GB RAM, socket AM3 (bad processor), and antec 600w power supply. I will be running it case-less on cardboard, mostly because my 7970 does not fit in the case he had :whiste:
Anyways, I cannot get this board to start up. I followed http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems and http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/335272-31-troubleshooting-beep-post-display to try and diagnose it, but I cannot get it to POST with memory. Without RAM, I got one long beep, and short beeps which is right on for memory error. Once I install ANY ram, regardless of slot and stick (tried 4 separate pc3-10600 2 GB sticks, nothing) I get a silent boot, no beeps, but fans are running and motherboard shows LED is on. Before I go and order RAM (which I don't think is an issue) I want to make sure I diagnose the correct faulty part.
Here's my thought process. My friend brought this to me after a sudden shutdown. Once I opened the case it was extremely dusty, his video card was clogged, as were most of the fans, and the CPU had no grease on it. At the time, it would power on and do one long beep and 4 short beeps the manual says is hardware failure... I read somewhere else this was probably CPU failure, but I forget what site that was. Goes into storage, he gets out of state job and doesn't care about this tower anymore.
Fast forward 5 months to today. I snag a 7970 for a good price and also an Athlon II X4. The X4 did not seem very well packed, it just had the pins in a foam square, and the processor was in a plastic bag vacuum sealed in thin foam with the sticker slapped on. When I take the processor out of the bag for the first time, there is tons of lint stuck between the square and the pins and the foam is tough to fully take off. I don't notice a pin get snagged on lint/hair ball and is bent practically flat. Of course, even though I'm careful it snaps as soon as I apply pressure
Hoping it doesn't ruin it (I've read success stories) I continue to install it, but I had to press it into the socket just a bit. Everything else went together smoothly. No start though or beeps. I start removing components and get down to just the CPU and Heatsink w/fan, which produces beep code for no memory installed. I try all 4 sticks, all separate slots, no beep or post every time. Removed the processor and I notice that next to the broken off pin is another bent one, and the opposite side has a couple slightly bent ones, nothing too horrendous though I straightened them out.
Swapping in the previous, supposedly bad processor produces the same no beep no post though; no longer the long beep and 4 short beeps. The "bad" one has perfect pins.
What is the bad part though?
Motherboard has ALL bad DIMM slots or are both CPUs destroyed? Is there any way to rule out the cpu, because they both produced beep codes?
Hell, should I just replace both? I mean, I can get away with a $100 board and any dual core... Just would hate to replace the board if I don't need to, this asus has plenty of pcie ports for what I need. Sorry it's kinda long
Anyways, I cannot get this board to start up. I followed http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems and http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/335272-31-troubleshooting-beep-post-display to try and diagnose it, but I cannot get it to POST with memory. Without RAM, I got one long beep, and short beeps which is right on for memory error. Once I install ANY ram, regardless of slot and stick (tried 4 separate pc3-10600 2 GB sticks, nothing) I get a silent boot, no beeps, but fans are running and motherboard shows LED is on. Before I go and order RAM (which I don't think is an issue) I want to make sure I diagnose the correct faulty part.
Here's my thought process. My friend brought this to me after a sudden shutdown. Once I opened the case it was extremely dusty, his video card was clogged, as were most of the fans, and the CPU had no grease on it. At the time, it would power on and do one long beep and 4 short beeps the manual says is hardware failure... I read somewhere else this was probably CPU failure, but I forget what site that was. Goes into storage, he gets out of state job and doesn't care about this tower anymore.
Fast forward 5 months to today. I snag a 7970 for a good price and also an Athlon II X4. The X4 did not seem very well packed, it just had the pins in a foam square, and the processor was in a plastic bag vacuum sealed in thin foam with the sticker slapped on. When I take the processor out of the bag for the first time, there is tons of lint stuck between the square and the pins and the foam is tough to fully take off. I don't notice a pin get snagged on lint/hair ball and is bent practically flat. Of course, even though I'm careful it snaps as soon as I apply pressure
Hoping it doesn't ruin it (I've read success stories) I continue to install it, but I had to press it into the socket just a bit. Everything else went together smoothly. No start though or beeps. I start removing components and get down to just the CPU and Heatsink w/fan, which produces beep code for no memory installed. I try all 4 sticks, all separate slots, no beep or post every time. Removed the processor and I notice that next to the broken off pin is another bent one, and the opposite side has a couple slightly bent ones, nothing too horrendous though I straightened them out. Swapping in the previous, supposedly bad processor produces the same no beep no post though; no longer the long beep and 4 short beeps. The "bad" one has perfect pins.
What is the bad part though?
Motherboard has ALL bad DIMM slots or are both CPUs destroyed? Is there any way to rule out the cpu, because they both produced beep codes?
Hell, should I just replace both? I mean, I can get away with a $100 board and any dual core... Just would hate to replace the board if I don't need to, this asus has plenty of pcie ports for what I need. Sorry it's kinda long
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