DFI nf4 Ultra Infinity

[LazerMane]

A few months ago I bought a DFI nf4 Ultra Infinity motherboard, and before that a Sapphire Radeon x800xl pci-e video card. Both worked just dandy until a couple weeks ago when my motherboard shut off and would not start again. Removing/replacing the power to the PSU will allow me to press the power button and have the lights turn on for a split-second and have the fans spin once, but that was all i got out of it. I managed to get it to boot successfully once and then it stayed on for about five minutes until it turned off again. My computer technician friend told me that it was most likely a bad motherboard, so I sent it back for a replacement.

When the replacement arrived, I wired everything up and set everything correct and tried to turn it on. Tried. The same thing happened again: the lights flashed, the fans spun, and nothing more would happen.

After playing around with it for a while, I was able to get it to boot consistently with the video card not plugged in at all. I would power it on, I would turn it off and insert the video card and hit the powerbutton again, and it would boot up successfully.

Every time I have gotten it to boot up successfully like this the computer has always gone dead/switched off after three to five minutes of use, regardless of whether I was running normal windows or if I was running in safe mode.

I have contacted the DFI engineer in North America describing the problem, and he immediately fired back a snippy email telling me if the motherboard had the same problem after replacement, it must be another component in my computer.

Disengaging and/or reengaging anything to the motherboard except for the video card does not get it to boot. For this reason I am inclined to suspect that I might also have a faulty video card as well.

Now the question is, what should I do about this? I have no other PCI-E video cards or computers with motherboards with them in my house, and neither does my tech support guy have anything compatible we can use to test it with.

I am thinking that I should RMA both the motherboard AND the video card, although that would be the biggest pain in the neck for all concerned.

Do any of you have any idea what I should do about this?

 

[OBCT]

You already RMAd the mobo, and it sounds like a video card problem, since you say you can get it to boot by removing/inserting the video card. Try cleaning the PCIe slot, there might be dust in there. Clean the connector on the video card too.

Also, do you have another power supply? Maybe the PSU can't feed the graphics card and motherboard, so it shuts down.

Try getting a new power supply before you RMA the graphics card. Maybe see if you have a friend with a good PSU that you can try.

 

[LazerMane]

Yeah, I have been thinking about the PSU.

It's a 480-watt offbrand gaming-type thing, but I'd think that would have enough capacity for a measly Radeon x800XL and an AMD Athlon 64 Venice.

I also have 1GB of pc2700 ram, two optical drives, two physical harddisks.

 

[OBCT]

Strip everything from the system that you don't need. Take out one stick of RAM, unhook both optical drives, and unhook the HD that you don't boot from. Take out any PCI cards, etc. Then turn on your system. If you still have a problem, then I doubt it's the PSU, since you just took off a good bit of wattage from the system.

 

[LazerMane]

I've been told that power supplies are pretty straight forward, either they work or they don't type deal.

And how would I go about cleaning my PCI-E port?

 

[OBCT]

Blow into the slot without the card in it (NES style, lol). For the connectors on the PCIe card, just wipe them off with your finger or a cloth.

 

[LazerMane]

I haven't tried your suggestion yet, but I doubt that will fix my problems.

Tomorrow I plan to go and see if i can buy a different powersupply and a different video card to test things out with. Once tested I will take them back for a refund.

 

[LazerMane]

Also! Something new.

If i can get it to boot up, it will more or less consistently boot up without me touching the switch on the PSU as long as I don't touch anything inside the case physically.

However, it still turns itself off after 2-5 minutes of being up.

Also! When I hit the power button and the lights flash and the fans spin, the power button will remain illuminated as if everything were on and running correctly. If I hold the powerbutton to turn it off, the light will go out and from there I am able to hit it again and get the same blinking lights/fans spinning behavior out of it without touching the PSU.

 

[LazerMane]

By the way, I've kind of decided that this problem is hardware related. I used to think that it was something in Windows that i was booting up into that was causing it to turn off.

Sadly, it's not so simple. I've just had it die twice while attempting to install windows xp again/play around in the BIOS.