I just purchased a Gigabyte motherboard (M55SLI-S4) and installed it in a machine I'm building (Athlon64x2 3800, Zalman 9500, PNY GeForce 7600XT PCI-E, reused HDDs, case, and Thermaltake PS). Last night, when I finished assembling the machine I turned it on to make sure everything was working (and it was). I spent a few minutes browsing the BIOS (wanted to become familiar with where things are in it), exited out of it and turned off the power supply when it started to reboot. Then I unplugged the computer (to protect it from any surges) and went to bed.
When I got up in the morning and turned it on to start installing Windows, the fans would all spin up as normal but the machine showed no other indications of booting up. The screen showed no information and I couldn't hear the computer "thinking" despite the case being open and right next to me. After several failed attempts to start it, I tried adding a PCI graphics card to see if it was my new graphics board that had died and I still got nothing on the screen. Then I tested the monitor by plugging it into another computer and it works fine. I can?t even get the CD-tray to open when I turn it on and press the button.
Basically it would appear that my computer spontaneously died overnight (while unplugged, no less) and because I'm getting absolutely no indications of the computer thinking and I've mostly eliminated the graphics card as an option, I suspect it was the motherboard. Have you ever heard of anything like this or have any ideas? I suppose I could assume the board is bad and RMA it, but I would <i>really</i> like to avoid doing that because of all of the extra time and hassle of pulling it out of the machine, waiting for a new one, and then having to install it all over again. I'm especially confused because everything worked perfectly last night and I haven't made any changes to it since. Have any of you seen anything like this before?
[Update 8/4] After trying to turn it on periodically throughout the day with no luck, it suddenly decided to start working this evening. I'd been trying removing the video card and then putting in a PCI video card when it decided to get as far as showing the video-card's information pre-POST before crashing, then I put the normal video card back in and it booted fine. Doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to it. For a few hours, it worked just great and I was able to install Windows, drivers, and some benchmarking software (in hopes of overclocking later on).
Then, just as I was opening CPU-Z (which had opened without problems before), it spontaneously crashed (instant reboot, no errors or anything) and started a loop of booting through the end of the first screen of POST before starting over (my attempts to get into the BIOS failed). All of my efforts to get it up and running again have failed, so I'm pretty convinced this is just a flaky board in need of an RMA. One of the reviewers on Newegg said his shipped with a flaky BIOS that an update was able to fix, but it sounds like he was having a different problem from me and I'm really hesitant to trust it even if I were able to boot it up and update the BIOS (I don't even know what version I have).
So, I guess it's off to Newegg with it for an RMA replacement. Hopefully this is an anomaly defect and I won't have to deal with this problem again. Thanks anyway!
When I got up in the morning and turned it on to start installing Windows, the fans would all spin up as normal but the machine showed no other indications of booting up. The screen showed no information and I couldn't hear the computer "thinking" despite the case being open and right next to me. After several failed attempts to start it, I tried adding a PCI graphics card to see if it was my new graphics board that had died and I still got nothing on the screen. Then I tested the monitor by plugging it into another computer and it works fine. I can?t even get the CD-tray to open when I turn it on and press the button.
Basically it would appear that my computer spontaneously died overnight (while unplugged, no less) and because I'm getting absolutely no indications of the computer thinking and I've mostly eliminated the graphics card as an option, I suspect it was the motherboard. Have you ever heard of anything like this or have any ideas? I suppose I could assume the board is bad and RMA it, but I would <i>really</i> like to avoid doing that because of all of the extra time and hassle of pulling it out of the machine, waiting for a new one, and then having to install it all over again. I'm especially confused because everything worked perfectly last night and I haven't made any changes to it since. Have any of you seen anything like this before?
[Update 8/4] After trying to turn it on periodically throughout the day with no luck, it suddenly decided to start working this evening. I'd been trying removing the video card and then putting in a PCI video card when it decided to get as far as showing the video-card's information pre-POST before crashing, then I put the normal video card back in and it booted fine. Doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to it. For a few hours, it worked just great and I was able to install Windows, drivers, and some benchmarking software (in hopes of overclocking later on).
Then, just as I was opening CPU-Z (which had opened without problems before), it spontaneously crashed (instant reboot, no errors or anything) and started a loop of booting through the end of the first screen of POST before starting over (my attempts to get into the BIOS failed). All of my efforts to get it up and running again have failed, so I'm pretty convinced this is just a flaky board in need of an RMA. One of the reviewers on Newegg said his shipped with a flaky BIOS that an update was able to fix, but it sounds like he was having a different problem from me and I'm really hesitant to trust it even if I were able to boot it up and update the BIOS (I don't even know what version I have).
So, I guess it's off to Newegg with it for an RMA replacement. Hopefully this is an anomaly defect and I won't have to deal with this problem again. Thanks anyway!