Must RMA something- but what?

[MWISimmer]

I do feel for you Sean, I'm sure you'll get it sorted soon, Nick & congo's expertise will see to that no doubt..
[quote]But I'm being mellow about it. I have the simpit to work on; it's a lovely weekend and I'll be taking Peg out for a romp at the dog park shortly... kinda broke until Friday, but life is good.

Why spoil it all screaming on the phone at some poor bastard in India

[beaky]

Here is what I would do for farts & giggles...


Unplug the tower and hit the power button a few times to de-energize the PSU. Pull all but 1 stick of memory. Disconnect all the drives in the system. Run only the motherboard and video card. Clear the CMOS.. check the manual on how to properly do that...

Power up and see if you get something out of it. If not, swap the 12v for one off the other rail and try again.


If still not... Some Asus motherboards allow the INSERT key be held down to load a boot BIOS when overclocking fails... this is done by hitting the power button and then hit and hold the INSERT key until you hear the beep and boot.

Sounds like a plan... can't hurt, I guess.


[EDIT] Well, that didn't work... even went through the entire process with the monitor plugged into both ports on the GPU (still not sure which, if either, is the default).
Thanks for the tip, though...

[NicksFXHouse]

Sounds like a plan... can't hurt, I guess.


[EDIT] Well, that didn't work... even went through the entire process with the monitor plugged into both ports on the GPU (still not sure which, if either, is the default).
Thanks for the tip, though...

Then you are more than likely dealing with the GSkill voltage bug or a defective component. I would think there would be enough juice to see something light up.

Since you have 2 sticks of memory I think we can rule out the memory itself being defective but from that thread I browsed it looks like you may be borked until you get the voltage in the BIOS increased so the GSkill sticks will run.

That is assuming the motherboard or the processor are not defective. Motherboards will typically have diagnostic lights, beeps (or in my case beeps. lights and a voice) which indicate the condition of the system/memory/ drives/CPU but they are not always accurate. If you manage to get another stick of DDR2 memory as a temp solution to get into the BIOS and are getting nothing at all at boot I would think either the mobo or processor are borked.

I was hoping you would at least see a boot take place even if it crashed before it got through the POST screen.

I do think that power supply is very under-powered for the rig and it is possible it is currently, or at the very least, will,.. give you trouble.

Unless Cam or Congo have more to add or suggest I would look at the memory voltage issue next.

Sorry you are on hold like this.. I know that kind of holdup irrates me to no end.


EDIT: I take it you do not have another PCIe video card to run a quick test with?

[NicksFXHouse]

Seems all the rhetoric and awards about power saving features is so much more lip service, or in reality a way to keep power requirements within domestic limits!

3 phase PSU's anyone ?

he he he


you got that $heit right

I remember when 3 phase power regulators came of age on the better motherboards back in 1998. Back then it looked like someone soldered a power supply on the motherboard. The general market did not see it widespread until around 2002 which was well after VR's were able to take more pounding with less heatsink.

[beaky]

Sorry you are on hold like this.. I know that kind of holdup irrates me to no end.

You're not alone.I've been daydreaming about this first power-up for months now... but I deserve this; should've done more research.

I take it you do not have another PCIe video card to run a quick test with?

Unfortunately, no. But I have a week before I can do much else with this ($$), so I might be able to borrow one meanwhile.

Happened to bump into a neighbor today who as it turns out used to be a software engineer... he's a little behind the current wave of hardware (his eyebrows shot up when I told him my 500W PSU probably wasn't strong enough- LOL), but he suggested I try putting the GPU in the other PCI slot. Just tried it, and nothing but the "hardware error" beep. So I think I have a healthy (but very fussy) motherboard here... your theory that my problem is twofold (insufficient dedicated graphics power amperage along with the "wrong" memory) makes a lot of sense.


Here's another noobish question for everybody:the Asus manual says this board will not support "two-sided" DDRAM, and I see that my  G. Skill sticks have chips on... both sides.
Is that what "2-sided" refers to?

[/quote]

[congo]

Yup

[beaky]

Yup  

Weeelll... there ya go. It's outta here.

More than one friend has said "Weird... you should be fine as long as it's DDR2", but I guess the P5B is somewhat atypical.

I'll definitely  upgrade the PSU, too... might need to put in a separate 40A breaker just for the computers, now...


On a side note: tried a little FS9 session last night on my old machine, and it was so f'd-up I may do a reinstall of the program... got to get rid of a lot of unused freeware in there, too.
That and a defrag and a massive HDD housecleaning ought to keep me busy until I get #2 operational...

Another question: anybody know which DVI port on the 7950 is the default? Can't seem to find that info (the manual is more like an advertisement than a proper manual).

[NicksFXHouse]

[quote]Here's another noobish question for everybody:the Asus manual says this board will not support "two-sided" DDRAM, and I see that my

[NicksFXHouse]

Another question: anybody know which DVI port on the 7950 is the default? Can't seem to find that info (the manual is more like an advertisement than a proper manual).

Does the EVGA website have any information?

Also.. you may want to bookmark this for searching EVGA issues and answers... http://www.evga.com/community/

[beaky]

From the manual This motherboard does not support memory modules made up of 128 Mb chips or double sided x16 memory modules.

If they are double sided x16 memory modules or made of128mb chips, no

Otherwise, even if chips are on both sides of the sticks.. yes they wil work.


The modules you listed should work however from the thread I browsed they may not boot because of the BIOS and/or the voltage.

Hard to say what size chips they are... G.Skills' site is no help with that. The heat spreaders conceal the chip faces, so...

I think in the long run it'll just be easier to swap these for something Asus recommends.

[beaky]

Does the EVGA website have any information?

Also.. you may want to bookmark this for searching EVGA issues and answers... http://www.evga.com/community/

Thanks. Of course, no one there is asking such basic questions... so I have to surrender more personal info to reguister so I can wait for an answer on something that one look at a proper manual would clarify.

Tried the Products page on the eVga website, but it's dead.

[NicksFXHouse]

If your not going to overclock to complete insanity... these will work

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231065

If you need a touch of insanity, these are what you are after...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231077


Unlike AMD, Intel is not as sensitive to latency and 1T. Intel prefers balls to the walls bus speed over anything else but running 1T at faster bus speeds is a perk with the faster modules.

[beaky]

Rashershnasher...
finally got to try some different RAM (tp of the hat to our friend hays), but still dead as a doornail.
This RAM is also not on the Asus QVL (although I think it's just the "twin" version of the Corsair CM2X 6400 modules), so I still don't know...

[congo]

I'd like to see that board fire up at a technician's bench before I bought more ram for it.

[beaky]

I'd like to see that board fire up at a technician's bench before I bought more ram for it.

Okay, that's one vote in favor of returning the board...I suppose it could be the CPU, as well. Maybe I'll flip a coin...