945P Pro MB second faillure

My first Gigabyte 945P Pro motherboard failed to boot after just a few hours of use. It would stop halfway thru the boot process. Newegg send me a new one. It worked for a week and half. Yesterday I shut it down after 12 hours of use, and restarted it after a few minutes, because I forgot something. Now it will not boot at all. It will go back to NewEgg and I reordered an MSI motherboard. The Newegg reviews shows 2 other users with similar faillures. Pretty strange nevertheless. Gigabyte suggest it must be caused by other components, like the power supply, because this would never happen with one of their MB's. Sounds like BS to me. Any ideas?

KP

XP Pro
P4 640
1 GB OCX memory
250 BB WD SATA drive
300 GB WD IDE drive
120 GB maxtor IDE drive
425 W powersupply

 

I'd test your PSU.
425w sounds Generic, tell us the brand of your PSU & how many amps on the +12v rail
(Most modern day systems need a PSU that can provide aprox 32-34 amps on the +12v rail or rails, some PSU's have two +12v rails Better IMO)(a generic 425w might be half of that)


One thing for sure, if it's your PSU, a new or different brand MOBO wont help.
A crappy PSU can Kill Any Hardware, MOBO/CPU/HDD's etc.

 

I bought it from NewEgg, see

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153023

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153023

Thermaltake TR2 W0070 ATX 430W Power Supply 115/230 V
Input Current 9A @ 115V, 5A @ 230V
Output +3.3V@20A, +5V@30A, +12V@18A, -5V@18A, -12V@0.5A, +5VSB@0.8A

It had 174 reviews at NewEgg and just about all of them were happy with the PS. It looks like most everybody had good luck with this thing.

What is the faillure mode of the MB with a PS that is not quit right?

Thanks for your help.

KP

 

Yeah, it does sound like the Power Supply to me as well. Although Thermaltake is a good brand, (I have a 480W one running 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives and a Radeon 9800 Pro) it may just be a bad one. Do you have another PSU you could try out. Just one that you know works? 350W at least.

A bad PSU could kill your motherboard, CPU, and/or RAM

When you say it doesn't boot anymore, be specific... Can you get into BIOS?

 

The first motherboard worked for about an hour. It then would boot up partially and then only show part of the next sentence of the boot status. BIOS reset did not make any difference. That would be it. Per Gigabyte tech support I removed the video board to see if the beeps would show it went that far into the boot sequence, which it did not. Gigabyte agreed that there was a problem with the MB. BTW, these were exactly the same symptoms another NewEgg buyer reported.

The second time I had been using the new MB for about a week. No problems during that week. After working all day long I shut it down, but started it up after about 5 minutes because I forgot something. Now it will not boot at all. The screen stays black, no beeps, no nothing. The monitor never gets a video signal of any kind. The various fans come on and I can hear the HD starting with its initial grinds for about 5 seconds and then nothing else. No sounds of any further booting wiht the HD's either. I tried a reset of the BIOS, but it did not make any difference, screen stays black.

Before the faillure no changes were made in XP or BIOS setup.

When the computer was working I verified proper operations (CPU temp (<45F) and such), but nothing out of the ordinary was noticed.

KP

 

Sorry. I didn't mean to say that the motherboard wasn't bad. I'm just saying, it could be the power supply that is causing it. If I were you, I'd verify that the PSU is outputing the correct voltages/amps before you try any more motherboards.

 

You are right and thank you for your suggestions. That is why I got on this board, making sure I am not overlooking anything. I will check the voltages. The amps I can only check with the MB in ofcourse and if I can borrow a clamp-on amp meter somewhere. I don't even know if the clampon meters work on DC, or AC only. I don't think I want to cut wires to measure the amps.

Are these PS's regulated in such a way that if there is no load the voltages are still stabilized at where they should be with a load connected. I woul like to think so.

I do have an old powersupply, but it is a 20 pin unit. I am going to have to check if it works with this GB board.

Does anyone know if any of the voltage / temp monitoring software package actually records or chart the measured values at regular intervals. I might be able to see a trend or spiking of something misbehaving itself in the PS. I believe my voltmeter can record peak values, need to look into this. Would I be right in assuming an overvoltage spike could cause the MB problem, if so which of the many power supply connections in the 24 pin plug might be the most critical?

Questions, questions......, maybe I am getting way too technical on this. I never fried a MB before, let alone two of them in a week.

KP