zombie board died again, maybe?

[ElFenix]

years ago i bought a couple refurb boards for a spare i3 sandy bridge i had laying around. i didn't test them in time to return them. one would crash at random, and after such short periods of time that it was basically completely unusable. the other, an msi h77ma-g43, i couldn't get to boot or show any signs of life whatsoever.

for some reason, i kept both of them.

fast forward to a couple weeks ago, i had need of a couple more pcie slots, so i pulled out the old boards. first try the crashy one. it stayed on long eough to install windows, but won't stay on. and it won't reboot itself when it crashes. so, pretty much useless for mining.

so i moved everything over to the h77 board, thinking maybe i didn't do something right, maybe there was something i could do better to get it working. put everything together, short the power pins. nada. try to look for a jumper to reset the bios, and don't see any (apparently the pins are there but there was no jumper that came with the board, anyway). so i pull the battery, swap it with the one from the crashy board, short the power pins, and walla! life! this dead board works!

i got it hashing away, working great, reboot it a bunch, unplug it from the wall so i can put my power meter on it (pair of 1060s hashing away at ~45mh/s for all of 210 watts, nice). but it's a cluttered setup. the power supply was on top of another computer, with the board on its box and stuck in one of those cubicle shelf storage things. i figure i should at least put the power supply behind the board and cards, cut down on the clutter.

to do this i unplugged the supply, drive, whatnot. put it all back together, short the power pins, and... nothing. not a thing. checked the switch, connections, everything. no boot. not even a whimper. unplugged everything but the ram and processor... nothing. not a thing. tried pulling the battery, changing it for a new one, shorting the cmos reset pins with the handy screwdriver. nothing.


anyone got any clue as to what might be going on?

 

[UsandThem]

The only thing I could think of is a capacitor(s) could be finicky or bad, or maybe there is some type of defect/short in the PCB.

I had a board like that once (Abit BP6), which actually was the reason I joined this forum, that did random things like that without reason. Would start sometimes, and other times it wouldn't. Sometimes it was stable for days on end, other times it wouldn't stay up long enough to type an email. I spent almost a year trying to figure out was wrong before it went in the garbage and was replaced with an Asus board that was flawless.

 

[ElFenix]

i guess you're right.

i was so happy when the thing powered on after swapping out the battery.

oh well.

 

[Burpo]

"try to look for a jumper to reset the bios, and don't see any (apparently the pins are there but there was no jumper that came with the board"

Is it a 3 pin header? Does that jumper have to be there for it to boot?

Edit: Nope, just looked it up and only 2 pins.. Hmmmm, flaky board I guess..

 

[KLiK]

years ago i bought a couple refurb boards for a spare i3 sandy bridge i had laying around. i didn't test them in time to return them. one would crash at random, and after such short periods of time that it was basically completely unusable. the other, an msi h77ma-g43, i couldn't get to boot or show any signs of life whatsoever.

for some reason, i kept both of them.

fast forward to a couple weeks ago, i had need of a couple more pcie slots, so i pulled out the old boards. first try the crashy one. it stayed on long eough to install windows, but won't stay on. and it won't reboot itself when it crashes. so, pretty much useless for mining.

so i moved everything over to the h77 board, thinking maybe i didn't do something right, maybe there was something i could do better to get it working. put everything together, short the power pins. nada. try to look for a jumper to reset the bios, and don't see any (apparently the pins are there but there was no jumper that came with the board, anyway). so i pull the battery, swap it with the one from the crashy board, short the power pins, and walla! life! this dead board works!

i got it hashing away, working great, reboot it a bunch, unplug it from the wall so i can put my power meter on it (pair of 1060s hashing away at ~45mh/s for all of 210 watts, nice). but it's a cluttered setup. the power supply was on top of another computer, with the board on its box and stuck in one of those cubicle shelf storage things. i figure i should at least put the power supply behind the board and cards, cut down on the clutter.

to do this i unplugged the supply, drive, whatnot. put it all back together, short the power pins, and... nothing. not a thing. checked the switch, connections, everything. no boot. not even a whimper. unplugged everything but the ram and processor... nothing. not a thing. tried pulling the battery, changing it for a new one, shorting the cmos reset pins with the handy screwdriver. nothing.


anyone got any clue as to what might be going on?

Thanks for the idea...have similar problem on DP35DP board, so will try out with the battery replacement! 😉

The only thing I could think of is a capacitor(s) could be finicky or bad, or maybe there is some type of defect/short in the PCB.

I had a board like that once (Abit BP6), which actually was the reason I joined this forum, that did random things like that without reason. Would start sometimes, and other times it wouldn't. Sometimes it was stable for days on end, other times it wouldn't stay up long enough to type an email. I spent almost a year trying to figure out was wrong before it went in the garbage and was replaced with an Asus board that was flawless.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Got several of those at home, museum piece of art!

One has been re-soldered, to be good. Found all the data about fixing the board on BP6.com forum. But that dies out, unfortunately.