TR Forums

Hey. Sup.
I'm running a
gigabyte ep45 ds3r
Intel Quad Q9450
3 WD Caviar Blacks
like 5 fans
850w Cooler Master PSU (came with case I know i don't need one this big)
Asus HD 4870 (piece of crap I can't wait until I get more money to buy a better one)
the whole thing is 3 years old.
So, here are the problems....I recently moved and maybe something happened in the 5 hr travel time but...

So first everything turned on, fans running, LED's all on, HDD's spinning, etc. but the mobo was shooting out continuous short beeps. Nothing appears on the monitor. Checked the manual, it said this was a PSU problem. So I re-wire everything in and keep getting the same thing. It starts working again a couple of times, but freezes when I try to insert a cat5e into the back...Other than that it's fine for several hours. Then it just freezes after like 10-15 minutes each time.

This morning it just kept beeping at me. Then I reinserted the graphics card and replugged it in for no reason and it was working for a bit. Now I either get the beeping or it seems like it's on but nothing on the monitor still. The graphics card will make a clicking sound, and the red lights on the back of it will flash while it clicks every maybe 2 minutes, then it will restart eventually. Now, it went back to the beeping.

I was wondering if you guys had anything before i started buying new parts (mmmm). I was wondering if maybe it could be the power cord connecting the psu to the power strip? I have about a hundred of these and might have grabbed the wrong one while unpacking (it does say 12v on it though) I don't have any spare parts to test out unfortunately but I was wondering if any of this resonated with any of you guys. Please help!

jspidah wrote:

It starts working again a couple of times, but freezes when I try to insert a cat5e into the back...Other than that it's fine for several hours. Then it just freezes after like 10-15 minutes each time.

My guess is the PSU or RAM. Test the memory itself (after disconnecting unnecssary things like fans, NICs, HDDs)?

What OS? If it's Vista or W7, use the "extended" memory diagnostic test, that starts when you boot from the installation DVD. If it's linux, MemTest86+ is on installation disks (at least for Ubuntu and OpenSUSE distributions) If the test fails, try each stick of RAM independently.

My bet is the PSU, but running this test should help support that theory.

When you were moving places and rearranging the furniture, is there a chance you moved the computer case while the HDDs were spinning?

Thanks for the reply.

The thing froze maybe 4 or 5 times, but mostly it never even gets to the point where it would start booting up. At this point I can't even test anything out...

Update: I found an extremely old Echo Star(??) PSU in the basement. It had a 10 pin connector instead of 12, but I stuck it in anyway. It didn't even have any 6 pins for my graphics card.

What happened was the fans connected to the mobo started spinning and lighting up and the lights on the mobo and graphics card were on. No beeping at me or anything like that.

So does this mean the psu is the problem?

jspidah wrote:

The thing froze maybe 4 or 5 times, but mostly it never even gets to the point where it would start booting up.

It never got to the BIOS, or never got the the OS loading?

like doesn't even register on the monitor. Never gets to the bios.

Were all the HDDs and PCI/PCI-E cards disconnected, except for the gpu?
Did you try each stick of RAM independently?
Did you try the orange PCI-E slot for the GPU, instead of the blue slot?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128344

wibeasley wrote:

Were all the HDDs and PCI/PCI-E cards disconnected, except for the gpu?
Did you try each stick of RAM independently?
Did you try the orange PCI-E slot for the GPU, instead of the blue slot?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128344

hey. thank you so much for this. I would have never been proactive enough to just start taking stuff out of it.

I plugged everything back in and took out 2 sticks of ram. worked perfectly. Then i put in the other two sticks i took out in the same slots I just tested the first set in. Still working. Plugged all 4 back in, broken again.

Tried all 4 sticks in the same slot, and it beeped at me on the last stick, which i placed in another slot and then back into the first slot. It worked both times....And i just placed them all back into their slots and I'm writing this message to you guys from the offending computer.

So what does this mean? The manual indicates that the beeping means a power problem, but when I fiddled with the RAM of all things it started to work again. It might have been the extra pci cards but it's working with them now too.

I'll post back when the thing starts to break again, and run those RAM tests previously mentioned here just in case.

Sounds promising. A lot of people here recommend running those tests for 8+ hours overnight. Which test are you running? The MemTest+ runs until you stop it. The Windows test takes a little intervention. Tell it "Extended" and set it to some big number like 100.