old pc, new heatsink, PC wont POST

[Hood]

@Hood im certain i had the bracket correct, with the screws in the correct holes for the socket type

The easy way to check is by trying to slightly twist the heatsink, you know, just to make it look aligned perfectly straight - when mine was too tight, it wouldn't move at all. After I corrected it, you could move it fairly easily. If yours can still be moved (when fully tightened down), it's not too tight. If it's so tight it wont move, there's a problem somewhere. The X bracket is easy to get wrong, because it's not that obvious, and looks fine even when it's on wrong. The mounting system has drawn criticism from many people.

 

[NorthboundOcclusive]

will take that under advisement. thanks

 

[NorthboundOcclusive]

okay. latest attempt at fixing this.

PSU reinstalled to case, connected to wall power. grounded self with contact to case and psu housing (might be too late for that, but still). PSU switch to ON position.
reinstalled motherboard into case, cleaned cpu and heatsink. removed cpu and checked pins (all straight, nothing bent or missing, no wear or corrosion visible to naked eye). replaced cpu in socket. applied TIM, and stock cooler.
attached motherboard power, cpu power. case fans attached to their respective motherboard headers.
power connections all firmly and securely seated.
all fans continue to spin after power on.

boot with GPU in 2nd pcie slot: fail, no beeps
boot with zero ram: fail, no beeps
boot with 1 stick ram: fail, no beeps.
boot with ram in A1/B1 slots: fail, no beeps
boot with ps/2 kb attached: fail no beeps. keyboard's Sleep button will light up, but not numlock, capslock or scroll lock (lack of lights expected behavior with this kb)
boot with cmos jumper in Clear position: fail, no beeps.
boot after cmos jumper returned to Normal: fail, no beeps.
--- i did borrow a multimeter, cmos battery reads 3v DC, or within 0.2 of that mark.

gpu heatsink is noticeably warm to the touch, cpu heatsink is barely above ambient room temp, if at all.
south bridge and north bridge heatsinks also warm to touch. even the ram heat spreaders feel warmer than the cpu heat sink, but that's debatable.

short of dropping the cpu into another known working am3 mobo, or a known working cpu into this motherboard, i think im out of options here.

 

[Devon68]

short of dropping the cpu into another known working am3 mobo, or a known working cpu into this motherboard, i think im out of options here.

It seems that might be your only option left.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Throwing parts at this problem might be easy, but where is the fun in that?

Before you do tho....

Remove the backing plate from the back of the motherboard. Use anything you have that can add a layer of protection between the bracket and the mother board, since this is temporary for testing even folded paper towel will do. Also, before re-installing the plate, make sure there are no solder "tits" sticking out too far that might penetrate the cheap foam insulation that comes with those cooler kits.

 

[Jose Jeswin]

Dear northbound, Did you check your psu with one of these?..

Or.. try connecting one of these to the motherboard and check for bios beeps..

 

[NorthboundOcclusive]

@Devon68 yes, but i dont have any other am3 cpus or motherboards, so that's out.

@DeathtoGnomes i still have the stock cooler & stock backplate on, the backplate is plastic and the mount screws are isolated from the mobo pcb inside...(for lack of a better word) nipples, that go thru the the mobo from the back to the front.
i removed the backplate folded a paper towel in behind it.
there's no improvement, pc still refuses to show signs of life. however, when i press the FP power switch, im now noticing (maybe its new, maybe i just missed it before) im seeing the briefest flicker of light from the disk activity LED, a super quick blink before the power LED comes on. like its lit for less than 500ms and off again, and maybe 100-200ms later the power LED comes on. as i said, im not sure if that's a new occurrence after the towel or not
between that, and having it out of the case on cardboard earlier (a couple posts up, #13) im certain its not shorting to the motherboard tray in the case.

@Jose Jeswin i dont have power supply tester, but i did borrow the psu from my game rig (its an antec earthwatts 650w unit) which absolutely does work, but made no difference in the pc in question. that tells me that while the el-cheapo bargain basement CM psu might still be a problem, it's not the problem
there is also one of those speakers mounted to the case near the front fan, and attached to the appropriate motherboard header, but i get no beeps from it at all. maybe the speaker's failed, maybe it hasnt, i dont have another one to test with.

 

[eidairaman1]

Put the reset switch where the power button was on the motherboard, try it, if same, most likely the mobo is kaput, you can always try the chip in another board at a shop.

Sometimes you should only need the necessities in just to get a post screen, that is mobo, ram, gpu. May have to try 1 dimm even.

 

[Jose Jeswin]

Dear northbound...your last resort may be to plug in a bios post card which will show you bios error codes...I have used one and it has helped me through some difficult situations..

make sure you get one which shows you compatible bios codes..for e.g....AWARDBIOS or AMIBIOS or PHOENIXBIOS..

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

@Devon68 yes, but i dont have any other am3 cpus or motherboards, so that's out.

@DeathtoGnomes i still have the stock cooler & stock backplate on, the backplate is plastic and the mount screws are isolated from the mobo pcb inside...(for lack of a better word) nipples, that go thru the the mobo from the back to the front.
i removed the backplate folded a paper towel in behind it.
there's no improvement, pc still refuses to show signs of life. however, when i press the FP power switch, im now noticing (maybe its new, maybe i just missed it before) im seeing the briefest flicker of light from the disk activity LED, a super quick blink before the power LED comes on. like its lit for less than 500ms and off again, and maybe 100-200ms later the power LED comes on. as i said, im not sure if that's a new occurrence after the towel or not
between that, and having it out of the case on cardboard earlier (a couple posts up, #13) im certain its not shorting to the motherboard tray in the case.

@Jose Jeswin i dont have power supply tester, but i did borrow the psu from my game rig (its an antec earthwatts 650w unit) which absolutely does work, but made no difference in the pc in question. that tells me that while the el-cheapo bargain basement CM psu might still be a problem, it's not the problem
there is also one of those speakers mounted to the case near the front fan, and attached to the appropriate motherboard header, but i get no beeps from it at all. maybe the speaker's failed, maybe it hasnt, i dont have another one to test with.

I'm getting confused there of whats been done and whats been suggested. The HDD light blink means nothing at this point. If you are not powering up with a working PSU, why are you still testing with the old PSU? it still could be bad, and it could have caused the motherboard and the HDD to go bad, if those are bad then a working PSU wont work either.

MY backing plate suggestion was because I assumed you were using the one that came with the new cooler, making my suggesting futile.

idk, too many chefs here.

 

[eidairaman1]

I'm getting confused there of whats been done and whats been suggested. The HDD light blink means nothing at this point. If you are not powering up with a working PSU, why are you still testing with the old PSU? it still could be bad, and it could have caused the motherboard and the HDD to go bad, if those are bad then a working PSU wont work either.

MY backing plate suggestion was because I assumed you were using the one that came with the new cooler, making my suggesting futile.

idk, too many chefs here.

Chiefs*

 

[Mr.Scott]

Chiefs*

Too many chiefs spoil the broth?

 

[Final_Fighter]

i believe the op has pretty much narrowed it down to either cpu, mb or ram. at this point he needs to see if his cpu and ram are still good. if so then its the mb. everything has been gone threw except for verifying these components. once he finds out witch of these is bad then he can make the necessary repair.

 

[Assimilator]

@Assimilator with only the CPU, motherboard, and power, and literally nothing else, what am i looking for to indicate success?

[/QUOTE]

If the board and CPU aren't stone dead, the board should beep like a mofo at having no RAM in. (I don't know if your system has a built-in buzzer/speaker to beep with, if not you'll need to connect one as @eidairaman1 mentioned.)

 

[NorthboundOcclusive]

I'm getting confused there of whats been done and whats been suggested.

just to recap, to begin with i removed original stock cooler, installed hyper212evo per included instructions, and pc has utterly refused to boot since, even as far as the bios.
no video, no disk activity, no POST code beeps from the mobo speaker. speaker is external, and connected to mobo header pins instead of surface mount. all fans spin.

pc is currently in it's default/last-worked setup, with stock cooler installed, gpu installed, both ram sticks installed, system and storage drives, case fans connected, front panel headers connected

• i have two GPUs available for this pc, both are confirmed to work. swapped GPUs, and PCIe slots.
• monitor is shared with gaming rig, monitor confirmed to work, HDMI cable likewise
• removed the hyper212 and replaced the stock cooler, retention bracket and backplate.
• thermal paste gets removed, surfaces cleaned, and reapplied
• removed cpu from socket, inspected for damaged pins, replaced into socket
• power tails from PSU rechecked to be securely connected to motherboard
• used confirmed-working PSU from gaming rig
• CMOS battery has been removed
• CMOS jumper has been moved to CLEAR and back
• checked CMOS voltage
• reseated RAM
• removed RAM entirely.
• used 1 stick of RAM
• moved RAM to other ram slots
• no visible physical damage to motherboard surface components
• disconnected SSD/HDD
• removed entire motherboard from case onto cardboard
• cpu/board/power and front panel power switch only
• checked hyper212 backplate for damaged insulation
• used paper towel between (stock, plastic) backplate for additional insulation guarantee
• attached ps/2 keyboard
• swapped the front panel power and disk LED connectors, just for kicks and giggles, both LEDs work

what i cant do

• replace only the CPU (dont have another one)
• replace only the motherboard (dont have another one
• 'borrow' my gaming rig's PSU for extended periods of time (because i need it where it is, makes it hard to reply to this thread otherwise)

what i haven'd done (yet)

• installed ram into my gaming rig (both are DDR3, should work, right?) to confirm RAM's good
• installed one/both drives into gaming rig to confirm working.

ill try that later today, but i doubt that either of the drives or ram sticks have failed, keeping in mind that both have previously been isolated from this system with no change. i fully expect both will work in my gaming rig.
everything else i've been able to disconnect from the motherboard works (except maybe the mobo speaker, not sure about that one either way)


@DeathtoGnomes you asked why im still using the old PSU. a couple reasons, 1) i don't know that it's bad. the pc wont start even with a good PSU, so im going to assume original one works, and if nothing else it's still able to provide power to the motherboard, gpu and drives. 2) the only other PSU i have available belongs to my gaming rig, and since it's also my main pc these days, it'll get to keep all its components. my choice is either best PC works, or no PC works.

 

[eidairaman1]

you're at a point where you need to take it to a shop get the motherboard and the processor tested.

You could have bad power source in home, (not psu but power outlet)

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Chiefs*

chefs = kitchen
Chiefs = racial implications in a PC society that I didnt wanna get roasted over. Tag, your it!

Spoiler: Hideme

just to recap, to begin with i removed original stock cooler, installed hyper212evo per included instructions, and pc has utterly refused to boot since, even as far as the bios.
no video, no disk activity, no POST code beeps from the mobo speaker. speaker is external, and connected to mobo header pins instead of surface mount. all fans spin.

pc is currently in it's default/last-worked setup, with stock cooler installed, gpu installed, both ram sticks installed, system and storage drives, case fans connected, front panel headers connected

• i have two GPUs available for this pc, both are confirmed to work. swapped GPUs, and PCIe slots.
• monitor is shared with gaming rig, monitor confirmed to work, HDMI cable likewise
• removed the hyper212 and replaced the stock cooler, retention bracket and backplate.
• thermal paste gets removed, surfaces cleaned, and reapplied
• removed cpu from socket, inspected for damaged pins, replaced into socket
• power tails from PSU rechecked to be securely connected to motherboard
• used confirmed-working PSU from gaming rig
• CMOS battery has been removed
• CMOS jumper has been moved to CLEAR and back
• checked CMOS voltage
• reseated RAM
• removed RAM entirely.
• used 1 stick of RAM
• moved RAM to other ram slots
• no visible physical damage to motherboard surface components
• disconnected SSD/HDD
• removed entire motherboard from case onto cardboard
• cpu/board/power and front panel power switch only
• checked hyper212 backplate for damaged insulation
• used paper towel between (stock, plastic) backplate for additional insulation guarantee
• attached ps/2 keyboard
• swapped the front panel power and disk LED connectors, just for kicks and giggles, both LEDs work

what i cant do

• replace only the CPU (dont have another one)
• replace only the motherboard (dont have another one
• 'borrow' my gaming rig's PSU for extended periods of time (because i need it where it is, makes it hard to reply to this thread otherwise)

what i haven'd done (yet)

• installed ram into my gaming rig (both are DDR3, should work, right?) to confirm RAM's good
• installed one/both drives into gaming rig to confirm working.

ill try that later today, but i doubt that either of the drives or ram sticks have failed, keeping in mind that both have previously been isolated from this system with no change. i fully expect both will work in my gaming rig.
everything else i've been able to disconnect from the motherboard works (except maybe the mobo speaker, not sure about that one either way)


@DeathtoGnomes you asked why im still using the old PSU. a couple reasons, 1) i don't know that it's bad. the pc wont start even with a good PSU, so im going to assume original one works, and if nothing else it's still able to provide power to the motherboard, gpu and drives. 2) the only other PSU i have available belongs to my gaming rig, and since it's also my main pc these days, it'll get to keep all its components. my choice is either best PC works, or no PC works.

And does the PSU power up with a jumper too?