Neshi

So finally all the pieces came together and I assembled my computer.
Now I've ran into a problem.
When I push the startbutton the computer comes alive for maybe just a second, and then dies again. I can't get it to boot for a second time, only when I shut off the power to the pc, and then reconnecting it.

As far as I know everything is connected in the right way and I have enough power for this system..
I don't know why it is shutting itself off like that.. What would the best thing for me to do?

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If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Zardon

check the motherboard is mounted correctly, sounds like a short.

Neshi

I checked it, and I had 1 too many mounting screws in the backplate. I removed that one and checked carefully if there was anything else before I put the motherboard back. But it's the same story..
I guess I'll take the computer to a shop for them to perform a check.

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Judas

depending on where that mounting screw was touching when you tried to fire up the board could have potentially fried the motherboard requireing an rma/replacement.

i can't stress it enough that before anything, always prepare the computer case before anything else, making sure that ever mount is properly located and secured for the motherboard, double triple checking the layout.

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Neshi

Forgot to thank you zardon.. so thx!

And Judas. I already thought about it, and it would really suck if this motherboard requires another RMA.. that would be the 3rd one in a row. I was 1000% sure I did it correctly, but I guess accidents happen. It gave the same respons before as after I removed that screw, so I don't think there has been done serious harm. If it requires an RMA, so be it. I am really wondering what the store will say..

It seems the more I work with hardware, the worse I get at it.

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Judas

if all else fails.. pull the motherboard out and run it in safemode.. (aka disconnect unplug almost everything and only run the basics)

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Zardon

The thing is, when you go to the store don't say the fault was possibly yours, just say it was DOA. if they fire it up and it works then you know its a problem with your system however I think something has possibly been damaged.

A little rule of thumb when building a system and im not patronising you either as you seem a smart enough guy, take your time.

Make sure all the mounts are in the correct positions and just take your time building it. Ive seen guys build a pc in 30 mins and its a dogs dinner.

Be methodical, lay everything out in front of you neatly and just work through it at a slow pace. Try not to walk around too much either as static builds up (fine if you wear an antistatic strap).

At least you know next time to take some care with that aspect of the system, the motherboard and PSU part of a build really is the most important.

Neshi

yea, at the store I just said I build the pc with some new parts, and now it won't boot.
I really wonder what really happened and I hope the store can fix it and tell my detailled what the problem was.

And I will remember what you said Zardon, although I'm pretty sure I was carefull enough when I built it... but if I was really carefull, I would have seen that mounting screw thing I reckon.

Ah well, it's a good learning point.

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

GigaWatt

what kind of board is it, the newer Abit boards have that way of behaving, i have a IB9 board from Abit and it seems to "die" on every shut down i do on my pc, that's why i stopped shutting it down, hahahaha.

if you said that this was your third time you do a replacement, than maby something isn't compatible in the system you "composed". as Judas wrote, just connect the graphic adapter, the power supply, the keyboard, the monitor and (ofecourse) the motherboard, and see if it runs.

also, some some of the newer motherborads have a "self test" BIOS. the BIOS checks if the current configuration is bootable, i.e. can run with this kind of configuration. maby the board isn't fried, maby the BIOS just checks if the board can run under those kind of settings and that kind of hardware attached to it, desides (for some reason) that it can't, and then just shuts off. try a different combination of components, a different graphic adapter (while everything else is unplugged), maby even a different power supply.

also check on the net if any of the users of the board had any kind of trouble with the board's BIOS. sometimes a bug in the BIOS can cause this kind of behaviour. for example, my IB9 borad required a BIOS flash (update), because, apperantly the BIOS Abit put on the board when the board was released on the market, was a beta version, so for some reason, if you manualy change some of the settings in the board BIOS, even though the settings aren't in conflict (demand more than the hardware can give) with any of the hardware devices, the BIOS just tels the motherboard to shut down. so i have to unplug and replug the poer cable every time i do a shut dow just so that the board can start (kind of a reset, i seems to work for me).

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this is of topic, but nevertheless, its hilarious . a friend of mine had this old FM/TV card, he didn't know if it was functional or not, so he just plugged it in to the PCI slot of his motherboard (i whitnesed the hole thing happeneing ). so, he plugs in the power cable to the power supply, starts the pc, and for a few seconds, everything is fine, the BIOS boots up, it shows all the statistics, and then smoke starts comming out of the case, hahahahahah . so quickly he unplugs the power cable from the power supply, even though (get this... ) XP is booting up while there is smoke comming out of the case... hahahahaha . so, he puls out the card from the board and the FM/TV card is fried (duh... ). he tries to "revive" the motherboard, tries to unplug all the devices from it, resets the BIOS, nothing works, the motherboard appears to be dead, the board doesn't even turn the CPU coller (when you plug in your power supply, and the BIOS is set to "turn off after power fail", the board turns the CPU cooler just a little bit, i guess this is because it takes the board a milisecond to check in which power off mode the BIOS is set, so in that milisecond, the CPU cooler turns just a little bit, ususally, from my experience, this means the board is OK). so we pronounce the motherboard dead and start greeving for my friends loss (lol ). drank a couple of beers, and whent home.

after a few weeks, i came across my friend on the street, so i asked him, what happened to his PC, and he just starts laughing. he says he bought a new motherboard and gave the old one (the "late" one ), to a friend of his, to see if it's really dead. so his friend puts in a CPU, power supply, a graphic card and the damn thing wokrks, so gives it back to my friend sayng that the board is OK, it works. so my friend plugs in his CPU, his power supply and his grpahic card, and the board is dead again, hahahahahah .

so the conclusion is that after that FM/TV card burned out on his motherboard, my friends configuration of devices (his CPU, his graphic card and his power supply) put on the motherboard, makes the motherboard useless and seems as it was dead, but if you put any other configuration of parts, the motherboard works, hahahahaha . i was stunned, that was the first time i heard anything like that ever happening (lol).
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It's not schisophrenia... it's just a voice in my head...

Neshi

its in the system specs
<------

But the point is, I couldn't even boot the pc, let alone get into the bios to change anything.
But it doesn't matter anymore. The pc is at the shop getting repaired and it's out of my hands now.

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

cozumel

I usually spend most of a day putting a rig together which is quite rediculous as I used to do about 10-15 rigs when I was working for a company a few years back. But then I like to take a have tea-break, watch a bit of TV and get distratced somewhat. Always ground myself when I get back to work though and always double & triple check everything I do.

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Judas

the longest part for me building a computer is the case prep... and then the thermal paste application for the heatsink and cpu..... the rest however is usually a swift proceedure.

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humonous

man Judas you always have a way of turning threads into what "you" do or think. if you take longer applying thermal paste than building the rest of the pc then you either apply the paste with a microscope (cpu and heatsink??!) or your builds are shoddy.

Anyway back to thread starter before another thread gets derailed.

I think it was a short. Im confused though, did the store take your full system? or just the motherboard? did you order them all from the one place?

cozumel

Firstly, apologies Neshi for this post being off-topic. Though I would like to state that I wish you well with your RMA and hope your rig eventually gets off the ground and provides you with a heap load of entertainement. We all make mistakes...I've made a ton...and some of them quite costly. It's all part of the learning curve and it is what makes our hobby such fun.




And now we move on to humonous
You are way out of line flaming Judas. Regardless of your opinion. He merely responded to my post and my post was a response to what came before. I am sure Judas is professional and puts together high quality rigs.

I recommend that you read the forum rules before making these types of posts and also recommed you follow the correct procedures if you find you are unhappy with anything posted by other members (including myself) within this forum. Making personalised comments is not the route you should be taking.

Thanks

Edit: Judas is the member who has offered Neshi the most support in this thread (with 3 posts).

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PangingJr

i hope we can talk about something else a bit while Neshi's motherboard is out to repair shop?

Judas, i'm interested to know how you go about applying the thermal paste part i mean could you tell me from start to the end.

cozumel

I'd like to know that too. I spend a long time with the heatsink/cpu due to preparation, lapping, cleaning etc. And that is probably the only thing I check 7-8 times afterwards to ensure it is seated correctly to provide proper cooling. If it doesn't look central to the eye I take it off again and re-seat. I get scared about things like that. The other one I check countless times is the fixing of the mobo mounting. Everything else I just throw together and hope for the best. Worst thing I've done is to drop a brand new 9800 gfx card on the floor and bits broke off. I had to get a cab 30 miles so I could replace the card immediately.

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Neshi

What do you do to the heatsink, cleaning/lapping and stuff like that? (what is lapping? I've heard that term several times but still am not quite sure what it exactly means)
The only thing I have done to the cpu is clean it thoroughly with alcohol, and then apply thermal paste for the 3rd part heatsink...

And about the mobo mounting.. that's something I will never do wrong again and check several thousands of times in the future!

To one of the posters above. The store I brought my computer to is just a computerstore in town which sells/repairs computer hardware. I didn't know what the problem was, and to be frank, I didn't want to go through all the trouble of finding out which part was broken or where the problem was. For alot of things I don't have the equipment to really check it.
I just dumped my computer (the whole thing; case and internals) and said to the guy: Here is my pc, I put in some new hardware and it won't boot. Could you take a look at it and try to fix it?


As soon as I know what the problem exactly was, you will know too.
Btw, tomorrow I will buy my very first car, look for pictures in the off-topic section (not now, but tomorrow )

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Judas

i take my time..... as i mentioned in the previous thread where i asked about people using the pre applied thermal pad or whatnot....


Time, in the world we live in right now, alot of people seem to keep digging themselves into a bigger hole and getting far to strict on time itself. Things are being rushed, the quality is failing, and frankly i don't care how good anyone is, they are pushing the envelope.

Anyways.

Yes i take my time doing the whole cpu/heatsink/mounting proceedure.

Why? Because it's pretty critical as most of everyone will already know, if you screw up at all, you could be plagued with stability/performance/heat problems if not the distruction of either the cpu or motherboard or in some rare cases, other things to top it all off.


I always remove the pre applied thermal paste/pad, depending on how it was applied it can take some time doing it carefully and thoroughly enough to give the best results. Intels stock "paste" is a snap though, very nice and easy to remove, some of the others though, where it's a PAD, tend to be quite difficult to remove sometimes, to the point were even the normal qtip and liquid remover of choice won't touch it forcing one to find a reliable, soft scrapper that won't carve the heatsink when trying to remove it.

I don't "lap" heatsinks, it's fairly unnessary nowadays. not unless you want to take it to the utmost extreme, and unless you know exactly what your doing, you can quite easily making things considerably worse.

My application of thermal paste goes on both the heatsink and the cpu..... i don't just put a tab on both and mush em together.... that doesn't work so well. I take the time to properly try to get a reasonable estimate of the part of the heatsink that'll be touching the cpu and with time, slowly spread it out across that area in the right thickness as even as possible, working it into the heatsink while doing so for potentially the best possible results. Same thing applies to the cpu, spreading it across as evenly as possible.

I use some heavy clean plastic to protect my finger from the paste, and the heatsink/cpu from my dry skin/oiles from my fingers. It can take time doing this. Depending on the size of the cpu and heatsink (the contact points) Obviously larger = more time usually.

The difference in results can be considerable, recently had a machine in with relatively to high a temps in my opinion.. averaging 65 or more degrees.... reappling my method brought it down to sub 40's

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cozumel

I haven't a clue why it is called lapping - doesn't really make sense. Basically when you get your CPU & heatsink they have been manufactured to have very flat, smooth surfaces. Yet they could be smoother and flatter. Lapping is merely the process of making the surfaces smoother so you get a better transfer of heat due to a more complete contact area. I just sit down in front of the TV with a DVD going and keep rubbing at heatsink and then cpu with sandpaper, gradually reducing the grade of sandpaper to get a real smooth surface. I always keep something electric plugged in next to me (with power off) so I can ground myself every so often when lapping the CPU. There is a lapping guide somewhere on DH that I'll go find and link to. Lapping you only really use if you have lots of time on your plate. It does reduce temperatures a little and is more commonly used to enhance potential overclocks.

Edit: DH Lapping Guide

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Zardon

I have never applied thermal component to both CPU and heatsink, if you apply the right amount to the cpu there is no need. The only way you would do that correctly is to apply half the right amount to the cpu then spend ages messing around on the base of the heatsink, utterly unneeded.

Lapping used to be a very important process in a good system build but as heatsink manufacturing is improving there are very little gains to be made from this. Depends obviously on the quality of the mount you buy.

Anyway Neshi let us know how you get on with the system, hopefully it works out for you buddy. If we can help just let us know, I hate to think of all the problems you have had

Judas

interestingly enough..... Arctic Silver was the one to suggest applying the correct amount of thermal paste to both the cpu and heatsink. It does make perfectly good logical sense though to put thermal paste on both as it would work int othe pits of both surfaces allowing for a solid contact.

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Zardon

Its not interesting at all, companies spin doctor many aspects of hardware and have done for decades, its all part of the game and people always buy into things, hook, line and sinker. Who was it in Arctic who said that because I have all their senior staff on MSN and once I read your post I asked a few and the words of Ken (one of the guys who actually makes the paste compounds) said this.

"there is no logical reason to apply paste to both heatsink and Cpu surfaces, both of these surfaces will merge with the paste regardless. All I can see this causing is an overappliance of the compound leading to possibly reduced temperatures and a lack of bonding between the heat transferance and surfaces"

Regardless I dont really care who says what, all my knowledge has been gained from building pcs for around 23 years. Ive seen guys do it various ways, and you know what? there is no massive technical science to it, you apply a specific amount to allow connection for heat transferance, too little means less contact on a molecular level and less heat dissipation and too much means less contact between surfaces and more heat trapped within the compound.

You can argue all you want Judas, but im fairly confident with my experience I could possibly teach you a few things building a system. No offense, but ive read enough of your posting over the years to know that you do quite a few things wrong.

Judas

i wasn't argueing... where'd you get the idea from?

I wasn't questioning your experience, i was discussing the matter that was brought up. If what the number of things i was doing wrong was indeed wrong, i'd not be where i am or doing what i'm doing, so what may be considered wrong, is likely just a method or alternative to doing it "right" as the final outcome apparently still works.. and works quite well.

The guide was posted by a user that linked directly to Arctic Silvers website many years ago, probably within the first year of Driverheaven, i've yet to find the thread it was posted in, that is where i got my orginal procedure from. It didn't have a name, it was a picture by picture suggested walkthrough...

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Mousey

I've never really had any trouble building my rig(s) apart from a few "wtf" moments a la Zalman CNPS9700 when i left the instructions at my grandma's house
Golden rule for me is always check EVERY mounting screw, once or twice the screw holding my 3850 in place fell out while the system was on, i absolutely bricked it because i was terrified it would short.
Yanked out the power and fished the screw out with some tweezers. Then chucked (the screw) in the bin and looked for one that wasn't quite as damaged.

A fair few times before i've over-tightened the mobo mounting screws into the copper spacers and they've been a complete pig to get out because they're completely threaded. Luckily though i picked up a little box of mounting screws and spacers from Maplin in Bradford last year, it's still got plenty of everything in it

My advice to pretty much anyone would be, always have lots of everything about. Lots of screw drivers, lots of screws, lots of extra tools (ie. torch), plenty to munch doesn't go amiss eitheir, just don't drop any in the case like me That way you don't have to go rummaging around the house for tools when the need arises and it doesn't break your concentration.
Also some music or a movie in the background is good for concentration, secondary media and all that

Good luck with it when you get the RMA Neshi, double, triple and quadruple check everything before you plug the power in

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Zardon

And "where" are you? building a few pcs in a remote town in Canada? I have seen enough pc's built by self proclaimed experts to know that there is a difference in a decent system build and a great one. I am pretty capable now of judging people via their posting and tech support especially one with over 20,000 posts on a forum ive ran for many years.

This particular procedure you do isn't "wrong", its unnecessary and ive explained why, if you want to continue doing it feel free. You are just wasting time which is fine as its your own. The wrong comments were about quite a few things ive read from you on DH before and rarely comment on (unless I think its damaging to new users or inexperienced people in the community - which is why i addressed this one as I dont want some kid spending 5 times as long trying to put paste on a heatsink and cpu and messing up the thermal dynamics).

its irrelevant however I know you well enough to be aware you never listen anyway.

In regards to the original thread starter (if anyone can remember) I would appreciate if he can let us know how his system works out

Neshi

Well, how could anyone ever forget me? Me, with all my questions and no answers.

Ok, what was the problem. Remember I told you the computer just wouldn't start and would turn itself off as soon I pressed the start button. Turns out it didn't do this in the shop. They could get into the BIOS and all, but apperently there has been a fault or error or something screwed up the windows installation. All the data on the hdd's will be gone, and I have to do a fresh install..
This kinda sucks, cos I had some important stuff on there not yet copied to my external hdd. But, can't do anything about it now.

So, as to the: Why didn't it post at my house but it did at the shop, nobody knows.

as to: What is the problem, probably a corrupt windows install.

I'll see what exactly has to be done as soon I get the pc back in the house.

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Zardon

It is possible the short rectified itself in transit, a small piece of metal touching the motherboard somewhere perhaps moved?

There is no way incidentally a corrupt windows install would cause a machine not to post at all. a dodgy installation would not stop the machine starting up it would just fail once it attempted to load the files for the OS to start running. A machine will post even without any Hard drive in the system.

Bizarre set of circumstances here. have to say.....

temeteus82

Hmm... I've been pondering this issue for some time now. Neshi if you still have the motherbords own box you could use it as a "case". Remove the mobo from the case and put it over the box. Then connect the drives and the gfx card. Then plug the PSU's wires on the mobo, drives and the gfx card. Then use the on board power switch to see if it boots normally.

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Zardon

that would be great teme if the machine wasnt working, but as the guys in the computer repair shop have fixed it, seems a bit pointless doing that now?

temeteus82

Z, you are correct there. Man I think I need those glasses asap....

But if some one has the same problem I still recomend to do that first then send it back to the store.

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