Dead board?

[stevo1210]

I assembled a PC for a client about 4 years ago and now the PC I assembled is *dead*.
It costed a lot of money at the time ($1500?) as I used top of the line components the whole way through... from an FSP 300W PSU, down to high quality Kingston RAM and a nice sturdy ATX case with 0.8mm sheet metal.

Basically, when you press the power button, the PC turns on, the fans spin and the HDD spins up... and that's about it. Holding the power button turns it off again. No display or beeps whatsoever.

The motherboard is an Asus P5P800-SE and the CPU is an Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz, socket 775.

The CPU fan seems to be a tad dirty, but nothing that I would call "clogged up badly". I haven't taken the board out of the case to test it alone, but I have stripped out the RAM, HDDs and optical drive and un-necessary PCI cards with no luck. I changed the graphics card (ATi X1600 AGP) with a different one and still no luck. Same with the RAM and still no-go. The motherboard LED is green which I think indicates it's got standby power and that's the only sign of life so far...

From what I've been told the user said she hasn't fiddled with anything internally... only once her brother re-installed windows XP and that was it... no other repairs to this specific computer.

I'm stumped. What's going on here?

[shovenose]

Re: Dead board?

i saw that exact mobo with bad caps by the cpu.check them!

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dead board?

The Asus OST syndrome.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...ghlight=P5P800

[stevo1210]

Re: Dead board?

Actually, the caps around the CPU area on this one are Panasonic FJ's. How do I remember this? I was very picky when choosing this board for my client due to the caps that Asus used at the time. If it had used OST, I wouldn't have bought it.

[ratdude747]

Re: Dead board?

you bought asus. no surprise it went. asus will just randomly die like that.

[shovenose]

Re: Dead board?

i always recommend asus. (brand loyalty) (i also only by wd hard drives and slap anyone who says they want a seagate).
but the older asus boards (amd oscket a/462 and intel socket 478 and early 775) SUCKED!!!
i had an athlon xp build i sold to someone for $20, and the asus mobo in it was suck a PITA to get working...and then it died 4month later...needless to say this customer was pissed

[seanc]

Re: Dead board?

You've not mentioned changing the PSU yet. That would have been my next step after removing RAM and getting no beeps.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dead board?

i always recommend asus. (brand loyalty) (i also only by wd hard drives and slap anyone who says they want a seagate).
but the older asus boards (amd oscket a/462 and intel socket 478 and early 775) SUCKED!!!
i had an athlon xp build i sold to someone for $20, and the asus mobo in it was suck a PITA to get working...and then it died 4month later...needless to say this customer was pissed

You will very few among experienced board rebuilders that recommend Asus.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...248#post123248

[acstech]

Re: Dead board?

You've not mentioned changing the PSU yet. That would have been my next step after removing RAM and getting no beeps.

I'll second that. I'd actually get out the multimeter and check voltages first though.

I assume you looked over the board for any visibly bad caps?

[brethin]

Re: Dead board?

plug a speaker/headset into the sound port and listen to the post reporter error message.

[brethin]

Re: Dead board?

You will very few among experienced board rebuilders that recommend Asus.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...248#post123248

If you consider the failure rate based on production numbers ASUS has a good record for reliability.

I have been building/rebuilding for 30+ years and would pick ASUS over alot of other brands. Maybe I am one of the few that hasn't had bad luck with them.

[styxbound]

Re: Dead board?

In the "no post" situation you describe I'm a little fanatical about properly clearing the bios. Do not depend on just taking out the battery briefly. Use the jumpers specified_or contacts if that's the case; furthermore try it at least 3 times. There are boards where you also have to turn the machine on briefly with the jumpers set one way and then turn it off and position the jumpers normally. There are also machines where you should not turn it on. The answer is to check the documentation so you know the proper procedure.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Dead board?

In laptops they do quite well:

http://lifehacker.com/5524704/laptop...-laptop-makers

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dead board?

In laptops they do quite well:

http://lifehacker.com/5524704/laptop...-laptop-makers

They didn't define "malfunction".
A failed update for the stock software package could be a "malfunction" for all you know.
.

[shovenose]

Re: Dead board?

i find asus makes goodmlaptops and their newer mobos (lga775 1333fsb or batter) are great!

[brethin]

Re: Dead board?

They didn't define "malfunction".
A failed update for the stock software package could be a "malfunction" for all you know.
.

Yes they did, you just have to go and read it.

http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/S...ility_1109.pdf

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dead board?

I see that:
""Only malfunctions reported directly to SquareTrade are included in the data.""

I see this too:
""SquareTrade analyzed failure rates for over 30,000 new laptop computers covered by SquareTrade Laptop Warranty plans.""

A 30,000 sample size is a bit like asking the kids at ONE high school in whole country if they've had sex and applying the conclusions drawn from that to the whole country.

Not to mention that anything included in that study would have to be three years old. - Not current products.

One thing it does show is that pretty much anything SquareTrade warranties is a POS on day 1.
NONE of those failure rates are acceptable.

.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dead board?

i find asus makes goodmlaptops and their newer mobos (lga775 1333fsb or batter) are great!

And you've worked on how many?

[stevo1210]

Re: Dead board?

You've not mentioned changing the PSU yet. That would have been my next step after removing RAM and getting no beeps.

Sorry, forgot to mention the PSU thing. That was the first thing I changed to see if any life would come by... I basically took a Thermaltake 430W PSU from the main system my client had and swapped it over and still the thing didn't boot. Removing the CMOS battery for a few minutes and also shorting the CLR_CMOS jumpers didn't change anything whatsoever.

[c_hegge]

Re: Dead board?

Sound like a faulty motherboard. I'm gonna disagree with shovenose on this one. I hate ASUS with a passion. Seen lots of them just die randomly. No bad caps, no burn marks, no bad PSU, or any other obvious cause of failure, but they just don't work.