No POST - eVGA nForce4 x16 SLI ... please help

Caffeinated

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 16, 2002
Messages
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I have this motherboard. I was happily using it today to look for a new soundcard, since the ALC850 onboard sounds horrible, and ::: poof ::: blue screen of death (stop 00000004 - I think, couldn't get more). It posted one more time, died in the middle of a boot and now the LED Fan lights just flicker when I turn the power supply off and back on, and press the power button. It won't turn on either, when I hit the little button on the motherboard to turn it on either.

I put new RAM in it yesterday, but before I even got started I ran Memtest to make sure all was well with it. It passed just fine. I then proceeded to bench it and test it for stability several times. I even played Titan Quest for three hours with it last night. While I was gaming, I noticed something weird, though, this might be a Titan Quest problem. Frame rates would come to a crawl (>5 FPS) until I went in to the options and "reset" the display (did this by turning vsync on and then back off).

I tried reseating the video card, and again, it posted for about 20 seconds (eVGA 6800 GT) then died, this time to not POST anymore. I popped a 6600 PCI-X in there, still no POST. Unplugged PATA, DVD-ROM drive and SATA cables from the motherboard (though thinking about it, I did leave power to the two sata drives plugged in but I pulled it for the PATA and DVD drives.)

THEN, I yanked out all of the new RAM, and put in a stick of OCZ RAM that was working fine in it (OCZ is two 512 mb chips, I got 2 1GB chips from NewEgg - tried each chip seperately). Still no go. I tried clearing the CMOS. Nothing. LED's on the fan come on, but it immediately shuts right back off.

My PS is this.
I don't think it's the PS, but I really don't know how to test it, and since the case fan LED's and the PS's LED come on, I figured it's okay.

I have a 4000+ San Diego. I really don't know where to go from here. Is it the motherboard? Did the new RAM (admittedly cheap, got two 1GB sticks of this ) kill it? I don't really think that's possible, but hell I'm willing to believe anything at this point.

Is it the video card? Help.

EDIT: Reading the Newegg reviews, maybe it is the power supply. Would the fan LED's still come on if this was the problem? Also, I've noticed that it seems a bit warmer inside the case than it should be, since I have an side panel intake fan and two exhaust fans. Would the PS cause any of these troubles?

Damn. I just wanted to build a halfway decent system that I could eventually put a Geforce 8800 GTS into when the price comes down :(. Now a big chunk of my storage is down (at least I floated the PATA's to external cases, since I had just formatted the PATA RAID array, anyway.) My two SATA's had a freaking movie on it that I was watching and of course didn't finish and figured "oh, I'll finish watching it when my new sound card comes in". Damn :(. My M-Audio Revolution 5.1 will be in tomorrow, and I have no system to put it in.
 
It could be the PSU. The LED's probably draw from the 5v rail, and your 12v blew.
 
Thanks for the reply. I have dual 12V rails on this PS. I tried the other one on my 6800 GT, and still no POST. Or would that also take out the main line to the MB? The LED on the MB does come on when I flip on the PS switch, and it stays on until I turn off the PS. When I turn off the PS and turn it back on, then press the power button, though, the CPU fan and PS fan spins/lights up for an instant, then it dies immediately.
 
I believe the CPU runs off the 12V rails also.

Anyway, it sounds like the PSU died.
 
Thanks for the help. Guess I'll head to the power supplies forum and ask for recommendations. I don't want to get another one like this. Thank god Newegg is good about RMAs.
 
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