Did I Fry my Motherboard or CPU while replacing video card?

[BuilderRookie]

Hi everyone - I'm having my first custom-built PC meltdown and could use any and all help / ideas.

This is my first custom-built rig (built in back in 2011 with your help!). After about five years of perfect computing (not a single problem) I decided the system deserved an upgrade in the video card department.

Tonight I opened the case to pull out the HD 6850 and replaced it with a GTX 1060. I did my best to ground myself (worked on tile floor instead of carpet - took my socks off - touched a fork before touching the computer).

Now, when I turn on the computer no signal is sent to the monitor (tried both HDMI and DVI) - and also the keyboard lights up all 3 lights (capslock, numlock, etc...). I never even see the initial motherboard (bios?) screen now. Just literally no signal.

I tried taking out the GTX 1060 and putting back in the HD 6850. Still no monitor signal and keyboard all lights on.

Tried taking out the HD 6850 and just tried to boot up with integrated graphics - still no luck.

Everything powers on. The case lights. The fans. The GPU fans. You can hear the traditional HDD spin up. The DVD drive will open and close.

But I'm dead in the water. Nothing being sent to the monitor and it doesn't appear to respond to the keyboard (control + alt + delete does nothing).

I have 2 ram sticks - I tried taking out 1. Still no luck. I put it back in and removed the other RAM stick. No luck.

I'm really not sure how I could have broken anything. Any ideas what happened? I might have used a little more force than necessary to push the GTX 1060 into the PCI slot, but... my motherboard was never THAT sensitive when I first assembled the PC.

Is it that easy to not be perfectly grounded? No socks on tile floor and touching a fork?

I'm not sure what else to try. I'm thinking the problem is the motherboard? I don't want to rebuild an entire machine since all the parts (except for the problem one) are still great and give me all the performance horsepower I want/need. It's the generation of motherboard that paired with the i5 2500 (not K version).

Is my best bet to find another motherboard of this type on eBay? Any other sites that sell older motherboards that you have used in the past?

I'd like to hold out hope the machine isn't dead - so I'm open to any ideas of things to try. I've heard removing the little battery might help? I haven't tried that yet.

-- EDIT -- I forgot to uninstall the AMD drivers before swapping cards. But now even when I put the AMD HD 6850 back in the computer doesn't seem to boot

Thanks so much!

 

[ch33zw1z]

Did you plug in the pci-e connectors to the vga?

Does your PSU meet requirements for the new VGA?

If so...keep reading..

Your symptom is called "no POST, no video"

1. Being "grounded". What you're trying to achieve is being at the same potential difference as the chassis, not a ground path. Be sure to unplug power before working on the inside of the PC, and pickup an ESD kit / strap for the future. The strap in the ESD kit has a resistor that dissipates voltage slowly so no ESD to the chassis, and then your at the same potential difference.

2. No POST, no video(NPNV). Very common symptom.

For POST to complete, you need only a few things, mother board(mobo) and power supply(psu) are a given.

POST completes successfully when the mobo sees the CPU, RAM, and VGA successfully. Unplug anything not required for POST, like hard drives, USB stuff, etc..

Typically with NPNV, it's either RAM or VGA holding it up.

First step is to see if the board is still alive by forcing a POST error. You will need a case speaker plugged into the speaker header on the mobo. Unplug power while removing or installing..

-uninstall the VGA, now power up, do you hear a POST error? If so, then the moBo is still alive, and the issue is with either the VGA and or PSU....if no POST error...keep going

-Now uninstall RAM, now power up, do you hear POST errors? If so, then you can start adding RAM back in one stick at a time. And put the VGA on as well. If not, then clear CMOS...

-clearing CMOS isn't difficult, and is sometimes what is required to kick the mobo in the butt. You'll see a cr2032 circle battery, and find the CMOS clear pins. Most of the time there's 3 pins with a 2 pin jumper, sometimes it's just two bare pins that you can either put a jumper on or use a screwdriver to jumper.

What you wanna do is(unplugged from power) pop the battery out, and then jumper the CMOS clear pins for 30 seconds or so.

Unjumper the CMOS clear pins, put the battery back in, and power up.

These are basic troubleshooting steps for No POST no video problems.

If none of this works, test with a spare power supply if you have one.

Don't be discouraged if it doesn't work right away, this is something you can try a few times until you get it right, unless you leave the power to the board while fiddling around in there, that's a sure fire way to break something

 

[BuilderRookie]

Thanks ch33zw1z!!! I got it working Here's what worked for me incase anyone has a similar problem in the future and runs into this thread:

I removed the CMOS battery and left it out for 10-15 minutes. I put my old graphics card back in and the computer booted up perfectly. I then uninstalled the old graphic card's drivers and then unplugged the machine again to swap in the new video card.

Same problem again - no post/boot/nothing.

I removed the CMOS battery again for 10-15 minutes and this time it worked! I don't think forgetting to uninstall the old drivers was even a problem (I do have the correct NVIDIA drivers now). I think my motherboard just requires a CMOS / BIOS reset every time you swap video cards.

Things are working perfectly now! I'll update here if that changes

Thanks again!

 

[ch33zw1z]

Great, thanks for updating. Others will have the same problem, it's inherent to computers like this

You're also correct here, the drivers don't matter until the Operating System loads. NPNV isn't that far in the boot.

You may want to look up the latest BIOS for your motherboard also.

 

[BuilderRookie]

Yikes, looks like I spoke too soon! Massive problems now. So the computer ran beautifully last night once I finally installed the new video card (after the CMOS reset). The performance with the new card was stellar. Computer was able to restart several times for new drivers / testing, etc... no problems.

Now today, out of the blue, it won't even power up. At least before it would power on and fans / hard-drive would start spinning. When I press the case's power button the USB lights light up on my mouse and USB-wifi adapter - indicating power is running through the motherboard -> USB, etc... but no fans, no hard-drive, no boot, no post.

I can't imagine it's a PSU problem as the new video card actually uses 7 watts less than the old card (and I ran the old card for years without any problems and it was within the range for my PSU). Unless my PSU is just dead from old-age - not from abuse?

I guess I'll try the CMOS battery removal as a catch-all since I'm not very knowledgeable, and I'll report back here soon. I'm open to any tips / ideas. Thanks!

 

[ch33zw1z]

Couldn't hurt to get new psu, post your system specs please

 

[BuilderRookie]

Removing the CMOS battery for 15 minutes allowed the system to boot up 100% perfectly. So weird. I didn't tweak any bios settings at all, I simply installed the new video card - and now it appears I need to remove the battery in between each power-off / power-on cycle?

The system can restart just fine. But now I never want to turn it off haha.

I'm wondering while it's on if I should try and find updated files for the motherboard. I'd be looking for bios? Not sure on the terminology of what I'm looking for - bios, bios flash, driver?

Here are my specs:

PSU: Antec EarthWatts 430 watts (never had a single problem)
Motherboard: AsRock H61M/U3S3 LGA 1155 Intel H61
CPU: i5 2500 (non k version)
RAM: 2x4gb DDR3 1333
Video: GTX 1060 (standard 120watts version)
HDD: Traditional samsung 1TB

 

[ch33zw1z]

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H61MU3S3/?cat=Download&os=BIOS

BIOS there, I would definitely update it.

 

[BuilderRookie]

Thanks! I went ahead and updated the BIOS. Things went very well. Here's where things get interesting.

When I attempted to turn the computer on this morning I was expecting it to not turn on (just like the previous morning - and I was expecting that I'd need to remove the CMOS battery, etc...). It powered up just fine and booted into Windows without any issue.

I left the room, came back 20 minutes later and the computer had powered off on its own - no monitor signal, no fans spinning, but USB lights still lighting up on USB devices...

Prior to it randomly shutting down by itself I was thinking the issue might have just been the CMOS battery needing replaced.

But now that it actually turned off once it was successfully into Windows... (which is the first "while booted up problem" this rig has ever had) I'm thinking it's the PSU or motherboard? Any experience what would make a computer just turn off like that?

One interesting note that confuses me: the rig ran stress-test games for hours and hours yesterday without any problems whatsoever. I'd think if it was bad RAM or PSU or motherboard... wouldn't issues have arised during the taxing tasks?

Open to any ideas - the PSU is from Q2 of 2011 - not sure if that's the most likely culprit? Would a bad PSU cause the CMOS battery needing to be replaced? Maybe replace the PSU & and the CMOS battery?

Thanks!!

 

[UsandThem]

Open to any ideas - the PSU is from Q2 of 2011 - not sure if that's the most likely culprit? Would a bad PSU cause the CMOS battery needing to be replaced? Maybe replace the PSU & and the CMOS battery?

Thanks!!

CMOS batteries all die at some point, so I'd just replace it to rule that out as an issue. However, if I looked up the correct Antec Earthwatts PSU, it is a PSU that was reviewed in 2007, so it's an older design. Since it already has 5 years of use, I would go ahead and get a new PSU. When a PSU is dying or struggling to power everything, it can cause weird random issues like you are experiencing. That PSU came with a 3 year warranty, and 3 years is typically all 'budget' PSUs come with even today.

You got your money's worth out of it for sure, but if you decided to upgrade your motherboard and CPU to a Haswell CPU or later, it likely wouldn't work properly anyways. So if you get a good quality PSU (5-10 year warranty), you can simply use it for your next build as well.

Also, the recommended mininum PSU for a GTX 1060 is 400w. You have a 430w unit. However, as PSUs age, they do become slightly less efficient and many times, their overall total power load rating decreases. How much it decreases is up for debate, and can differ greatly depending on heat / environment, but here are threads you can read through to know more than you ever wanted to know about capacitor aging:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/300392-28-capacitor-aging

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/569963-How-serious-PSU-aging-is

 

[ch33zw1z]

Good info, good job updating the BIOS.

I agree with usandthem, new PSU at this point, you're barely over the requirement