P5B-E does not boot

[Phrantic]

Yesterday me and my friend put together my new rig. Specs:

Asus P5B-E
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
OCZ ModStream 450w
G.Skill 2gb PC2-6400 4-4-4-12
Gainward 7900GT 512mb

This all in a nice and shiny Antec Solo case.

But after connecting everything the system does not boot. The motherboard does not post, make any sounds, show any sign of activity. The fans aren't running, the disks aren't spinning, there is no video output signal. All I do know is that the motherboard power led is on; the motherboard is supposedly receiving power.

I also tried to jumpstart it to make sure it wasn't the power button. And I removed and re-seated the battery in the motherboard. My friend also had some advanced tricks up his sleeve that I can't recall. Tried various combinations of connected hardware, double checked all of the cables. The only thing we haven't tried yet, is to take all the hardware out of the case and to boot it on a piece of cardboard or whatever.

The power supply has a big fan and a big LED; so it's clear that this one isn't activated when I try to boot the system. There is power, but where it all goes, I don't know. What I do know is that the psu is making a very soft yet audible cracking noise. Almost sounding like static / interference or something. I wouldn't know, I'm not that great a technician.

The memory is compatible with the motherboard. It doesn't boot with one or no memory sticks; it doesn't boot with a PC3200 one either.

Can anybody help this poor man? :/

 

[compressor]

Make sure the board is not shorting out anywhere and you used the correct mounting holes. Check under the motherboard to make sure there is nothing underneath shorting.

No fan turning on the PSU sure would make me think that is the problem, especially if it is making a strange noise.
If you can, pick up another PSU locally and try that first with just CPU and memory
installed.
I just built an e6600/P5B-E system and have been very happy.
Good luck.

 

[Phrantic]

Thanks for the reply compressor, help from people with identical builds is always very useful.

How can I tell if the motherboard is shorting out anywhere? There are no places where the board makes unusual contact. But it is a very tight fit in the case so perhaps it is something that's hard to spot. There are no loose screws or other small stuff on the front or the back of the motherboard.

I don't know what to think about the psu fan not turning on. It doesn't turn on until the pc boots I assume, if the motherboard doesn't receive the command from the power switch for some reason then there's no way for the psu to know it's meant to turn on its fan. That's just a shot in the dark though, from my own reasoning.

I think I'll drop by a pc store technical service here... they can test other psu's with the system as well as other motherboards and such. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Kromis]

Might be DOA after all...

 

[ja010387]

Did you ever figure out what the problem was/is? I had a very similar issue with a rev 1.03G P5B Deluxe / C2D 6300 setup as well. I decided that it wasn't likely to be the PSU, so I RMAd the motherboard (still waiting for the replacement).

 

[Phrantic]

My entire pc is currently at technical service, I still don't know exactly what is wrong but it is almost certainly one of the following:

1) The memory is rated at 1.9-2.0V and a stupid BIOS setting on behalf of Asus makes the motherboard attempt to boot the memory with 1.8V, which does not work and results in a no-POST.
2) There is a short on the power connectors which means that the power pins on the motherboard's front panel does not give power.
3) The case USB / Audio ports do not function properly and cause the system to not boot. Removing these cables could result in the system booting. Alternatively, it could be the case's power switch that is not working. Try to jumpstart the computer to find out.
4) Either the psu, motherboard or memory is dead, damanged or incompatible.

I've been told a lot that it is also useful to check if your motherboard screws aren't too tight, and if the 12V connector near the cpu isn't accidentally mixed up with a PCIe or other 4-pin connector.

In my case it's either 1 or 4; it's not 2 or 3 and I have no idea what else it could be. Good luck with your pc. If the new motherboard doesn't work either, take it to a hardware store.

 

[Chiropteran]

Sounds very familiar. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=32&threadid=1938346&enterthread=y

I bet you also have a bad motherboard.

 

[Phrantic]

That's bad news but at the same time comforting...

Could it be that your old P5B-E wasn't bad, it just had a flawed BIOS like I described in point 1? Otherwise that sucker's going back to Taiwan. Then again, you tried booting without anything but the cpu+heatsink.

 

[ja010387]

I also tried booting with and without RAM, video card, HDDs, and all other expansion cards. I even tried booting without the CPU for the heck of it. Nothing worked, and at no time did the motherboard show any signs of life.

It's my understanding that even if you have totally incompatible RAM the motherboard should still spin up the fans, switch the status LED to active (in this case, red), etc. Is that not the case?

 

[Phrantic]

Nope, no fans or LEDs, just the motherboard LED indicating there is power.

 

[HotWire]

Asus boards are quickly moving to the "don't buy " area for me.

 

[Mustanggt]

I am on my second p5b deluxe this one boots to bios fans all work but after bios nothing board shuts down

 

[Mustanggt]

I have a cheapo asrock board i have been switching in and out of different cases no problems boots every time, MSI is allready on my DNB list i think asus my end up there also.

 

[compressor]

Originally posted by: Phrantic
My entire pc is currently at technical service, I still don't know exactly what is wrong but it is almost certainly one of the following:

1) The memory is rated at 1.9-2.0V and a stupid BIOS setting on behalf of Asus makes the motherboard attempt to boot the memory with 1.8V, which does not work and results in a no-POST.

I've been away so I just seen this.
I had the "no post" problem with my memory after I did a update
to the latest bios. Worked fine before the bios update.
My memory is rated for 1.8-2.0.

The Fix:
I pulled the memory and put one stick in the slot farthest away from the CPU.
Powered on and the board posted. I then had to go into the bios setting and change the memory voltage from "auto" to "2.0v". Re-installed both sticks back to their
original positions and have had no problems since.
ASUS really need to fix this in the bios.

 

[Phrantic]

Yeah I tried booting it with one stick in the slot farthest away, but it still wouldn't post. My next step would have been trying to boot with 1.8V rated DDR2 memory, but I didn't have any and figured it would be as expensive bringing it to a repair service as it would be buying a cheap stick of DDR2-533 RAM, especially since I didn't know if that would help. I've told them to try and boot it with 1.8V memory so if that's the case they should locate and fix the problem there no doubt.

 

[Phrantic]

Sent the motherboard and the power supply RMA to my retailer as they advised.

The psu is definitely dead (did not show any power on voltmeter, did not jumpstart with one fan connected, system worked with another psu and another motherboard).

The motherboard is probably dead too, but there's a slight possibility that it is an old revision with a BIOS that does not support Core 2 Duo or 2.0V rated memory. My bet is that it's still broken. Two of the pins on the socket looked a little different. Not exactly bent, but they reflected light differently. Who knows what happened with it, that isn't my fault, you can just lay those processors in the socket. It would take force to bend those socket pins I think.

Waiting for new parts... cpu memory and videocard were all tested and are working.

 

[webadala98]

Phrantic,

how are you making out with new mb and power supply?

I just put together a system of the following

P5B
E6600
OCZ DDR2 800 4-4-4-15
Leadtek 7950GT

no post.... no video, nothing. Fans did spin tho.

 

[Phrantic]

The power supply was tested fully fuctional so I got that same one back... motherboard was found defective and I received a new one. Now it's all running without problems.

I see you have OCZ memory. Consider this reply I got on another forum:

I just set the same board up yesterday and had the same problem. Initially it booted fine with the original bios so I updated the board to the latest bios and then nada, dead as a door nail same as yours. I found out it's a ram issue (I'm using OCZ Platinum) and an unbelievably stupid bios setting on the part of Asus I might add. Here is what got me back in the game:

1. Make sure you have a speaker connected to the MB so you can hear the beeps.
2. Remove all the ram and start up the system. If you hear error beeps then good, the motherboard is probably working fine. If no beeps then you have other problems that I can't help you with.
3. Try a single stick of your ram in the slot furthest from the cpu and see if that works.
4. If it does work then go into the bios settings and take the mem voltage from "auto" to 2.0 volts. Then your ram should all work again normally.
5. If it doesn't fire up with your single stick of ram then you have the same issue as my OCZ and you will need to get a single slow stick of ram that only requires 1.8 volts to start. I had to go and purchase a cheap 256 meg stick of DDR2-533 ram and used that by itself to start up the system. VOILA! Once it booted it made the change from Auto to 2.0 volts on the bios setting for ram voltage and then rebooted the computer again with my OCZ ram instead of the the DDR2-533 and everything worked fine from that point.

Hopefully that works for you and with any luck Asus will fix this in their next bios. Love the board so far and have an e6400 running at 3.0ghz so far with stock settings and solid as a rock. Pretty sure I have lots more room to go on the overclock but I'll let it burn in first. Pretty darn pleased so far other than the above bios quirk. Good Luck!

 

[webadala98]

Thanks for the thread... I RMA'ed the MB, I hear no beeps what so ever with or without memory.

I'm loosing my confidence in ASUS, I have built 3 systems on ASUS MB over the past years without a hipcup. Let's see if the second MB will be better.