Hardware Problem

[JayCub]

I sat at my PC on friday night and the screen went black, the fans are running at 12v and no boot screen no post and although the lights are on the motherboard an Asus Rampage III the keyboard is not detected.

Believe me i have tried every fix suggested by Asus, not even a post warning beeb, as i installed the speaker as part of the build.

The only really unusual activity i noticed was the temps of the North bridge and South bridge chips as been too high although mentioned on an Asus thread was said to be normal about 63 degrees C.

The cpu was clocked at 3.8 Ghz and not overvolted, even if it had been it would not have booted.

I checked the ram the psu the gpu...all wires and connections, considering this has been running for a few months now and showed no signs of a problem..

i monitored the drives frequently 30 degrees for the hard drives 31 degrees internal temp everything shows as running well within specified parameters

i tried clearing the cmos, everthing mentioned on the Asus website... i don't think the cpu is dead as i ran it at 3.85 most of the time with the average temp around the 35 across all four cores...

i think the mobo is dead and Asus has had its fair share of problems regarding this board.

Any help before i send the board back would be welcome.

[hal9000]

When you say you have checked the ram, psu and gpu do you mean in another machine since this problem happened? I had a very similar problem a few years ago with my skt 775 machine and it turned out to be a dead ram stick (Corsair XMS as well).

A 63°C S/N Bridge these days is normal? WOW! I thought anything over about 50 was pushing it.

[JayCub]

fortunate in my case to have access to other pc's but to find three sticks of 3 x 4 Gb of ddr 3 to die at once would be a strange occurance... i have noticed that (hal9000) is well up on the behaviour of pc's... when i say that is normal for the S/N that is according to the rampage III owners thread and i think it is way too high and thought 50 or less, not sure if i read that applying new paste to the cooler may have helped but i don't want to void warranty... the components themselves are only a few months old... at the moment im using an xps 410 nice pc but slow as far as im concerned.

i read a few replies regarding ram and added one by one, same problem.

Thank you for the reply hal9000.

[hal9000]

I suppose if you have tried it stripped down to the bare essentials ie. CPU, 1 stick of ram (in different slots) and gfx (if there's no on board) then there really isn't much else you can try as it can only be 1 of 2 things, CPU or mobo.

As I have NEVER seen a CPU just die like that, I would look at the motherboard every time as they're always going wrong in comparison especially in your case if it has it's fair share of issues.

You're right not to touch the coolers on the board, you never know how difficult Asus might get if they think it's been tampered with!

[JayCub]

Thank you for your response hal9000, the board has built in safety features and warnings, it was like it just died, the fans trippled or more in speed, everything else stopped...the fans where software controlled...and the pc could not be powered down or reset and had to be turned off at the psu.. there are no cheap parts or corners cut... just my luck although im not the only one with this particular problem on the rampage III

[hsakarp_kahtap]

Jabcub , Please check your PSU it could be PSU fault , I remember when my corsair VX 550 dead , i had the same problem , try to check with another PSU .

[JayCub]

Thank you Prakash my friend, what springs to mind is my old days as a mechanic and electrical fault finding been my favourite part of my job, i didn't get covered in oil and grease although i don't have a testbed the psu is working fine...

[hal9000]

That's the problem when you can't 100% pin down the faulty component. Obviously the best way to be sure it's the board is to attach completely different components to it to see what happens, but unsurprisingly that's rather impractical for most people.

After having a look around the web about your issue, there are a LOT of Rampage owners with the black screen problem the same as yours or very similar . 99.9% of the time the board was the culprit. The inevitable conclusion sadly, is get the thing RMA'd.

[Bearcat]

Hi Jay, sorry to hear you are having trouble with your new build my friend. From everything you mentioned I would have to agree that it probably is the motherboard. I'm sure Asus will stand behind replacing it for you, but there is still the hassle of waiting for the new board and having to put everything back together. Would you mind keeping us up to date on how it goes with Asus? As you know, I just bought an Asus MB myself and would be most interested in hearing about how good their customer service is. Hope it all goes well for you.

[A Guy]

Hmmm, how did I miss this thread? Have never had to troubleshoot a PC problem yet (knock wood). Ironic as I'm a TV tech I had seen nothing but good things about that MB until you mentioned this. I'm hoping the RMA goes smoothly, and is the end of your troubles. A Guy