New homebuild for an old hand gone pear-shaped

[Crubman]

A-well helloo! I've just picked up the kit for a nice new rig, but a few days later I'm still no closer sadly.

Case: Gigabyte 3D Aurora
PSU: Enermax Liberty 620w
Motherboard: Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
CPU fan: Zalman CNPS9500-LED
Memory: 2 sets of Corsaid TwinX2048-3200 DDR (I.E. 4x 1gb modules)
Hard drive: Western Digital Raptor 74Gb SATA1
Video: Asus EAX1900 XTX
Video fan: Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer Accelero X2
DVD: NEC ND-4570A-GNB
Floppy: Black Sony 1.44Mb

I've also got some more kit, including a crossfire card, sound card, more hard drives etc, but I've not attached any of those yet and won't until I get the existing problems sorted. That said, the above list is what I put together to start with. Not the first computer I've built so I'm confident all the connections were right, correct amount of thermal paste on the CPU, front panel connections made correctly and so on.

The green light on the motherboard was on so I powered up, which seemed to go fine, all the fans and lights did their thing, but there was nothing onscreen. After disconnecting and reconnecting some of the parts, I tried again, and got a result. I got a message saying "CMOS checksum bad", to press F1 to enter setup, or F2 to proceed with default settings. I found that when the system restarted, it would go back to powering up but doing nothing, until I wiped the CMOS. So this cycle went on and on, each time I'd press F2 and start installing windows from regular XP discs (pre-SP1 and SP2 in turn), but it would never finish installing, always getting a blue screen of death. Messages like DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or something. I'm sorry, I can't reproduce now to
check, as you'll see.

A little gooling and I followed some advice to remove all but one of the RAM modules. This actually made a difference, now it kept searching my HD, floppy and CD in turn for "A8R32MVP.ROM", a BIOS image no doubt, so I put in the CD that came with the motherboard. It did its thing, then restarted, and now I can't do a thing. It's back to powering on just fine, all fans and lights, but no actual computational activity no matter how many combinations of memory modules, CMOS wiping etc. There's no beep codes, and no indicator lights anywhere to discern what might be wrong.

Did I kill it with the CD? Bad motherboard? Other piece of kit? Other PEBKAC? I've tried it with the X800XT from my current PC and other hard drives and DVD drive to no avail, I don't have another 939 processor to try though.

I'm no big overclocker, I just want a good solid system that's going to do me well for at least a year or two without needing any big cash infusions. Any advice anyone can give me would be hugely appreciated. The phrase "first-born" might come into it!

 

[mechBgon]

If you're not already doing so, give the memory modules their full rated voltage of 2.8 volts and see if that makes a difference. This is done in the motherboard's BIOS, and it being an Asus, it may be under the JumperFree Configuration section. LMK if you have trouble finding where.

 

[Crubman]

Can't I'm afraid, it doesn't do anything at all, just runs the fans to a blank screen. I don't think I'd have been able to before either, after exiting the BIOS it would restart and blank, which I could only overcome by wiping the CMOS. I'm far from an expert on BIOS matters but I didn't know of anything else to try.

 

[mechBgon]

Just to get the easy stuff out of the way first here...

1) do you have a PCI-Express power cable connecting your video card's PCI-Express receptacle to one of the brown receptacles on the power supply?

2) do you have the ATX12V cable connected to the motherboard? This is the basis for lots of PEBKAC errors

3) look on the BIOS chip, which looks something like this picture. It should have a white sticker on top, and one set of numbers is the BIOS revision. What's your BIOS revision (e.g. 0309 or another 0xxx number)? Asus's FAQ for the board indicates it may have problems with certain video cards, which an update to the latest BIOS would fix (you may need to slap in a standard PCI video card temporarily so you can update the BIOS, which is also a good test for determining whether this is the core problem too).


Welcome to the Forums, by the way Hope it works out for you, that looks like a righteous system

 

[Crubman]

Thanks for the welcome, I hope at some point I'll be able to be giving help as well as just asking!

Big ten-four to the first two, unfortunately the BIOS is 0311, which is more recent than the ATi fix. I don't have a PCI video card anymore by the look of things, I must have dumped it when I last moved with a bunch of old kit. I still have an ISA sound card for some reason though!

Do you think the BIOS on the CD would have been a pre-0309 version? It would certainly be ironic if that was wrong, given the board and graphics card are the same manufacturer.

 

[mechBgon]

Hmm Try this next: if you're powering the Zalman heatsink/fan unit from the motherboard, try powering it directly from the power supply, using a 3-pin-to-4-pin adapter. Make sure there are no fans being powered from the motherboard's 3-pin fan headers at all, in fact. I recall a couple instances where low-RPM fans gave such low RPM signals that the motherboard would get and refuse to POST, or would hang up during POST. Easily tested, at any rate.

If that doesn't get you anywhere, then if it were me, I would take the motherboard out of the case, lay it on cardboard, and cajole it a bit. The threatening doesn't come 'til later :evil: Then I'd hook up the video card, one memory module in slot DIMM_B1, no keyboard, no mouse, no drives, no auxiliary wiring like USB and Firewire ports. Just the motherboard, CPU & heatisnk/fan, video card and one memory module in the specified slot.

This out-of-the-case test setup eliminates the possibility of any electrical short-circuit with the case. You can use the case's Power Button wire to fire up the board, or just tickle the two ATX PWR pins with a metal object to make a momentary electrical connection between them.

Don't give up, keep at it

 

[Crubman]

Sorry, I've not got an adaptor to connect the Zalman to the PSU, but the fans are just as they were when it was at least beginning to install windows, so I wouldn't expect that to be the problem.

I finally managed to get it out of the case - the ability to cut and scrape the fingers on today's round-edged cases is surely unique to me - and tried the method you describe, but no joy I'm afraid.

*goes for the mallet...

 

[mechBgon]

Try firing it up with the Zalman's fan disconnected, then. With that much mass for the CPU to heat up, you're not going to hurt anything by running it that way for 30 seconds as a fact-finding step. Before you do, also unplug the computer, remove the CMOS battery, and clear the CMOS as shown on page 2-20 of the manual.

If the result is the same, then you can write that possibility off the list. I don't think motherboards fear mallets nearly as much as water or high-voltage shock, so keep that in mind

I haven't dealt with a Crossfire-type system personally, but looking at the manual on page 2-19, they do mention putting your Master video card in the blue slot. Is that how you've set yours up?

 

[Limboistik]

just want to say that is a damn nice rig

 

[Crubman]

Hehe, thanks to both of you for the compliments to the system. I spent more on it than I can really afford, I guess this trouble is my comeuppance

Sorry to report, no change after disconnecting the Zalman. With the crossfire setup though, when there's only the slave card (the XTX in this case) in the system, then it goes in the blue slot. When you have the master card as well, then that one goes in the blue slot and the slave would move down to the black.

'fraid I have to hit the hay now, I've got work in the morning. Thanks for the advice so far! I just know we're gonna crack this one way or the other