Administrative, Technology and Society

COmputer Woes Continue

17 Comments

OK, things get worse and worse. I got the MSI motherboard, and installed it yesterday. The build went fine, except it still refuses to issue video output. Fans are running, no debug LEDs are lit, but I’m in the same situation I was with the ASUS board.

I tried swapping out video cards again, with no joy. I swapped memory with my own desktop, and not only did it not work, but when I put the stick back in the computer, it gave me a DRAM error, so somehow I managed to damage half of my 32G of RAM. Plus, now my computer won’t boot. It just dumps me into rescue mode, and I don’t see anything obvious in the journal.

I’d be pulling hair if I had any to spare.

Technology and Society, Weird

New Computer Problem

46 Comments

That is, it’s a problem with a new computer build. When I hit the power-on switch, I just heard a pop, and then I smelled burnt electronics. Fortunately, I didn’t see or smell any damage to anything else in the chassis. Never had a PS fail right out of the box like that, but it’s clearly dead, because the fan won’t start when I jump 15 and 16 on the main connector. Guess I’ll have to RMA it to Newegg.

[Update after a trip to Best Buy]

New power supply (Corsair) fired up with no issues, all fans running. Now to figure out why it’s not doing a POST.

[Sunday-morning update]

OK, the machine is not providing video output. It’s not the graphics card, because I swapped it out with a known working one. So now I have to suspect the motherboard itself, though it is starting, and the CPU fan is running.

[Late-morning update]

OK, I went through this checklist, and now it won’t run at all. Nothing happens when I hit the power button.

[Update a while later]

OK, here’s the situation. There is an eight-pin and four-pin ATX connector next to each other on the board for the CPU. The new power supply doesn’t have a four-pin connector. It has an eight-pin, with several other eight-pins with a detachable two-pin (making them a six-pin). I tried plugging the six-pin into the four-pin connector, and that’s what made the motherboard fail to start. If I remove that second connector, and reset the CMOS, it will start again. How essential is getting power to that four-pin connector on the board, and how do I do it with this power supply? It clearly isn’t getting graphics from the existing set up, even though the fans and LEDs are running.

[Update a few minutes later]

For the curious, this is the board.

[Update a few more minutes later]

OK, in doing a search, I found this discussion at Reddit. It’s not very encouraging.

[Update a while later]

This seems stupid, but if I were to buy this Athlon, maybe it would solve the problem long enough to update the BIOS?

[Update mid-afternoon]

I read the first page of reviews on the board, and no one mentions this problem (though a lot of complaints about the LAN connector and the BIOS-reset button).

[Monday-morning update]

I’ve given up on the machine. I’m going to RMA the motherboard back to Newegg, and get an MSI at Best Buy.

[Bumped]

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