Is my board dead?

[Chaosblade02]

ASrock Z68 extreme 4, I went in to reinstall windows for a clean install and the power just cuts off on me, and puts me in a brick loop, even when in the bios the power just randomly cuts off, I opened the side panel to see if there was a short in the board anywhere and the LED on the inside of the board would always read "A3" before the power cuts off.

No settings were changed in the Bios prior to this happening.

 

[abekl]

What does the manual say A3 means?

 

[Patrese]

A3 means "IDE enable" on the manual. The board defaults to IDE mode on the EFI for some bizarre reason. Change it to AHCI and see what happens. Since the thing is powering off, I'd try to unplug all the SATA devices to see if is stays on and change it to AHCI.

If that doesn't help, we'll need a more detailed description of the issue. I mean, the board was working fine and then you reinstalled Windows and it went berserk? First build? What are the other components?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Did you bump the CPU heatsink? Perhaps it's overheating.

 

[Chaosblade02]

Did you bump the CPU heatsink? Perhaps it's overheating.

I can confirm that without a doubt my PC was not overheating and if anything it was running like a fridge, I checked the temps in the bios and the MB was running 31C and processor 29C.

I still haven't solved this problem, I unhooked EVERYTHING from the board, and hooked it back up, even removed the CPU Heat sink and reinstalled it.

Does the same thing. I got really no way to test my PSU to see if it is bad, it would be too much of a pain to unhook it and plug it in my old PC. So I am going to RMA the board and the PSU, then plug the new PSU in first and see if it boots up, if not then I will replace the board.

I swear this will be the last PC I ever try and build again. Too many complex pieces of technology, if one fails then you basically have to check everything, and sometimes there isn't a way to check it and you might end up having to replace everything and still not know what caused your build to screw up.

If you build a PC from scratch, seems like the chances are pretty high you will get something that is bad that will make your system inoperable. I would have gladly paid someone $200-$300 dollars to so this and test all my stuff and just hand me a PC build with components I selected that is guaranteed to work.

***Edit, I found a local tech store that does free diagnostics, which would eliminate any guess work for me as far as figuring out what components are bad. Gonna take it down there tomorrow, and I would gladly pay the guy to save me from a massive migraine headache of doing this myself.