Old machine, been a work horse for years but apparently froze and the display shut down when my brother was playing POE yesterday. He hard booted it and now it powers on but never posts\displays (got it going to bios twice sporadically but no further). Swapped it over to onboard graphics (tried both vga and display port) and pulled the card with the same results. Mem and CPU LED's Pass and then it stops at the VGA LED until powered off.

Today I cleaned out the machine completely as it was pretty dirty... working on it for a few hours I've got it to boot to megatrends boot screen and the asus bios twice, Reset the bios to defaults on one attempt but then back to it just not booting.

Specs:




What I've done so far with no joy:

- cleaned the shit out of it
- reset cmos and reseated battery
- reseated the 660 and tried it in a different pci-e slot
- pull card and connected via onboard vga and display port
- reseated\rearranged the ram, trying one at a time and any\all combos repeatedly.
- disconnected all the peripherals
- reconnected 24 and 4 pin as well as other cables, swapped the 6 pin on the 660

Things i can\should try as next steps?

- try another power supply
- swap my 1070 out of this rig to test (if this is happening with onboard as well as gpu does this matter?)
- try to flash the bios?
- what to do if I can get into the bios again?

Sadly at this point I think it's the motherboard but hope I'm missing something and that's not the case.

Open to and appreciate any suggestions on troubleshooting steps. Thanks in advance and let me know if I need to provide any more info.

1 stick of ram
At a time

Windows disk only on Intel chipset sata

If its making it to bios few times
Tells me many variables need to be removed
To rule the mobo is out

And check another psu no extensions

This post was edited by yupitsmeh on Jan 6 2019 12:08am

Thanks for your reply! regarding ram I have tried that already.



what do you mean by Windows disk only on Intel chipset sata? just boot to a windows recovery disK?

going to test another psu today

he means use the intel controller powered sata ports. (refer to manual or online to identify which are which)
was the machine oc'd at all? If so it might have just simply died.
does it have a changeable bios chip? if so a new one may only be 5-10$ and worth a shot.
Swapping pci lanes or gpus is pointless as the onboard is doing the same shit.

Make sure the CMOS battery isn't... dead.
You have an ASUS board so the BIOS chip should be UNsoldered. ASUS used to sell BIOS replacement chips for $15. Might want to check if they still do.


I would probably check the power supply, by temporarily replacing it with another one.

thanks for the clarification, got it, drives are already using those ports actually

oc'd when I first got it for a bit but it's been stock for a while. I was able to get into windows and ran intel's processor test and any other diag's I could think of which all passed.

You both mentioning the bios chip had not even crossed my mind and at that price definitely worth giving it a try. I see some for 15 bucks on a 3rd party site, don't see them directly from Asus.



I did replace the cmos battery as well, forgot to mention that.

Power supply's my next step, just a pita cause the only other one I have is the one in this rig.

This post was edited by hydrant on Jan 6 2019 10:29am

same result with a different PSU