Got my Asus P6T - and spent hours messing with it

[pm]

I was thinking last night that I've put together 40 or more computers over the years and I've come to do a lot of it on autopilot. I'll glance at the manual a bit, but pretty much I wing it doing the same thing that I've done for a long time.

So I get my Asus P6T - which is a very pretty and nicely laid out X58 board - and my new Intel i920 and my 2 sticks of Mushkin DDR3-1333 1.5V on Sat. and I was all ready for my new computer. I'm upgrading from a Core 2 Duo E6700 in a DFI Infinity 975X motherboard.

So I took out the old motherboard, put in the new one, hooked everything up and hit the power button and the fans came on and that was it. Nothing on the LCD, no beep codes, just fans on max and nothing. So I messed with it a bit and tried several more times. Then I took things out one by one and kept trying and nothing.

Finally I got it down to the CPU, the memory, and the video card and that was it. Still, fans maxed, no beep codes, no post. Then I took it out of the case, and still nothing. Then I changed power supplies, nothing. Then I put the memory in one by one and tried it with an individual stick, same - nothing.

So I decided it's a bad CPU, a bad motherboard or bad memory. So I drove to a friends house - and we tried the memory in his Intel Smackover board. That was fine. Passed memtest for 30 minutes. That left bad motherboard or bad CPU. So then with a bit of persuasion my very good friend removed his CPU and I put mine in and it was fine.

So, I decided my Asus P6T is bad. So I go to bed thinking about how little I want to drive down to Denver (about 70 minutes drive) to RMA the motherboard at the store there and I start to wonder if there's a BIOS reset switch or something. So I get the manual out and I'm flipping through all 100+ pages of it, and I come to the memory diagram.

The two active slots on the memory are not 1 and 3 as I had guessed when I was on autopilot. They are 2 and 4. In order from the CPU, away it goes "A2 A1 B2 B1 C2 C1". Uh? It's like the red-line on the PATA connector is closest to the power... there are rules to board layout and the first DIMM slot after the CPU is supposed to be the main one.

So I get out of bed, change memory slots over one on both sticks and... everything posts up just fine.

Guess I need to read the manual better - although, that said, it's not like they make a big deal out of pointing out in bold letters that the two DIMM slots that you need to use are the 2nd and 4th.

On the plus side, no 70 minute drive to Denver and I should have my i920 system running later tonight.

 

[CrimsonWolf]

:laugh:

I had the exact same problem with my P6T Deluxe. I had 3 sticks and filled up the black slots first. No post - just fans and a huge pit forming in my stomach. I fiddle with a bunch of parts (pull out one stick at a time, swap video cards, blah blah blah) and eventually put just a couple sticks in the orange slots, and BAM, it fires up. I put everything else back and it's working like a charm.

Never ran into this before. More idiot-proofing would be helpful I guess (like a sticker on the memory slots or something). Like you I don't spend more than a minute with the manual anymore (and pretty much just looking for "OMFG don't ever do this!" type warnings). Glad I'm not the only one... enjoy! Glad you got it working. :beer:

Consider this a PSA to anyone who searches for: ASUS P6T no post WTF?

 

[Gillbot]

Yeah, I've run into this before. With all this dual channel crap, you nearly always need to review the manual to see which mem slots to populate forst, etc.

 

[tomt4535]

Yeah, and every board is different so you pretty much have to look every time, kinda a pain in the ass.

 

[n7]

Haha, great story...

Always good to keep the manual handy

 

[CptLemur]

I was lucky with my P6t.

I had three sticks of Corsair Dominator (black in color) and did not like the Orange slots. So I put the memory in the Orange slots so that that only the black slots showed--to match the black memory.

Turned it all on and went my merry way--read that it would NOT have worked the other way a week or two later...

 

[QuantumPion]

Heh, convenient that this topic is near the top of the forum. I just put together my new rig with a p6t and it wouldn't POST. First thing I did was hop on to anand and lo and behold! My system boots fine now.

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

LOL! I lucked out then because My HS/Fan combo was so frickin huge that it was easier to populate the orange slots! I would have done the same damn thing.... and put all 3 in the black slots. Not that the black slots are unusable it was just easier for me to get a nice angle on inserting the dimms. Whew that woulda pissed me off.

 

[Caixote]

YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!! THANKS! After building my rig, I thought that I had a HUGE problem on my hands. I thought of all the worst case scenarios: RMA-ing a CPU, my P6T mobo or my memory. Since it was my first build and I'm not a computer guy, I didn't know where to begin. I stumbled upon your posts, switched my RAM and voila!! After some minor tweaks and the installation of my OS, I should be good to go! The weird thing is I read the manual and thought I followed the directions properly. Whoops! Thanks again! :-D