No beeping beeps!

Hi all
Any thoughts would be greatfully appreciated.
Have an Akoya (Medion) MD8855, AMD Phenon 11 x 4 820 Quad
Radeon 5670 card with 1024 onboard
1 TB HDD
4 GB DDR3 SD Ram
MB MS-7646
Dual monitors DVI and VGA connections
Recently upgrades the OS to Windows 10 (straight from Win 7) btw, the PC went for repair to Medion some years ago whilst under warranty and came back with Win7 32 bit installed. The Win 10 installation is 64 bit
I brought it from Aldis a few years ago after the one I built some years earlier got a bit dated and I reckoned I could not build another for the sub £500 the Medion PC cost. Been playing Bad Co 2, BF3 then BF4 quite happily for a few years on it albeit on low settings as well as general work stuff which sometimes involves a bit of video editing.
I've been getting a frame rate warning on BF4 recently and last week the screen froze when loading BF4. I had to hold the switch in to "shut down" and it would not start again. On start-up it will not POST and I do not get any beeps. It always used to beep once after POST. The cpu fan is not going wild and all the lights come on. The HDD had been stuttering a bit of late so that was my initial thought but I thought it worth checking the graphics card first. There are no onboard graphics on my board so I borrowed a card from support at work and it worked! POSTed and beeped once as normal. Problem solved, or so I thought. I treated myself to a Geforce GTX 960 and looked forward to some gaming on ultra settings!
Fitted the new card and the PC has gone back to not getting past POST. No beeps.Replaced it with the card I borrowed and now it wont POST with that card either. Spent this afternoon seating and reseating both cards, then disconnecting all usb, monitors, SATA connections and tried to see if I could get it to POST with and without either of the cards fitted. Even a beep would have made me happy.
I've tried reseating the BIOS chip in case it it loose. I have not taken out the RAM. Nor have I done that thing with the BIOS jumpers (which I think I have located) as I am worried about messing up settings when I have no access to the BIOS settings.
My inclination is to go and buy a hard drive, but if that fails I am guessing the motherboard is the problem (gulp!)

I'll take any advice at the moment. I lost a day's work today and am not looking forward to losing another one tomorrow.
Thanks for your support.

 

Have you unplugged the PC, removed the CMOS battery, and reset the BIOS? As a rule of thumb, you should reseat EVERYTHING and make sure the machine is clean/dust free. I've seen fine dust stop a machine from booting to the OS, and getting through POST.

If you have reset, disconnected the HDD, and it does not POST that would have me leaning toward the mobo, or the BIOS EEPROM. HDSentinel has pretty much always given me a solid read on an HDD, but you would have to connect the drive to another PC for it to read it.

This is more advanced, but if you have access to another PC and have an EEPROM flash programmer that would allow you to rule out the chip.

 

Thanks Mekanic

A few people have indicated that the bios reset is the next logical step. I've had a look at my mb and I cant find the row of three jumpers with a cap connector. All I can find are two pins, see pic, do I just short these with a screwdriver? The manual says short with the power turned off. No other steps. But it does not show any pictures.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/picture.php?albumid=439&pictureid=1616

Thanks

 

If you can remove the CMOS battery for 5 minutes, the BIOS will be reset. After removing the battery, press the power switch 3 times.

 

By the looks of the photo, this machine needs a thorough cleaning.

 

Right, here goes!

I've reset the BIOS by taking the battery out, pressing the on/off switch three times then waiting 15 mins for the BIOS to clear. I've put a meter on the battery and I have 3.17v. Then replaced it. Given the insides a good blow through.

I've dug out my backup/archive computer (Old Faithful) from where it lives in the loft and begun to take it apart to release some parts to test with (with a tear in my eye... it was a big thing when I built it, but I've been saving to the cloud for the last couple of years) It has 2 WD Caviar 200gb HDDs and I have tested restarting with both of these with all three graphic cards. Still no POST or beeps.

So that leaves the MB or PSU?

There is a 600w PSU in Old Faithful so I am bracing myself to take it out and replace the PSU in the newer PC. I have not checked that I have all the right connections for the MB. Though I guess I can lash it up to the MBB without a full installation.

If it is the MB, I think I might be better rebuilding in the nice rack/mount case that Old Faithful is in.

Can anyone recommend a MB and what socket I should be looking for, and a reasonable CPU combination remembering that I do like a game or two and have already brought the GXT 960 and have 2x2gb of DDR3. All my HDDs and optical drives are SATA.

(anyone wanna buy a couple of sticks of Corsair 1Gb DDR Ram?)

God! All this and the likelihood that I have missed something simple is messing my head up!

Thanks

 

If the known good PSU doesn't do the trick, I'd have to condemn the mobo at this point. I can't think of anything else to do (you've done the basics) without flashing the EEPROM, or replacing it completely.

Looking forward, if those two HDDs match you have the potential to run the newer rig in a RAID configuration.

As far as a mobo, your Phenom II is backwards compatible with AM3+. Personally, I swear by Asus.

 

Did some shopping, found this on clearance. Plenty of L2/L3 cache at a relatively low price:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8065332&Sku=


AM3+ boards are getting slim in the inventory these days:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...CatId=13&sel=Detail;31_174_73055_73055&Sort=2

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007625%20600138080&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICED&PageSize=30

 

Hi Mekanic

THanks so much for having a look. I took the 600w PSU and tried it with every permutation of HDD and graphics card starting with the MB with nothing connected then HDD1, HDD2 etc then HDD1+card1, HHD1+card2 etc resetting the bios each time. Not once did I get a peep of a post. Its got to be either the mb or the cpu. So do I buy a CPU and then find out its the MB? I think I need to draw a ine and have budgeted £200 for MB and CPU. Given that I have already invested in a graphics card for nearly £200 (cant believe I did that!) I ought to build something that can take advantage of it. I've been looking at this combo...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-336-AM

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-068-AK&groupid=701&catid=1903

I can just about afford this. What do you think?

Yes, if I have the HDD from the computer that died, 1tb and the 2x200gb from the old computer. I have old backups on one and photo collection on the other, but I have a couple of external drives for the photos. I could do some raiding, which I need to learn about anyway.

I'll use the reackmount case from my old computer. It has a few fans in it. I used this machine continually for about two years and it looks like the day it was assembled inside. Dust just doesnt get a chance to settle. So I think I will use this even tho the drop down front is a bit of a bugger.

Trying to pluck up the courage to order the bits today and be prepared to starve for the rest of the week.

THanks for your support. I'll let you know how I get on.

 

If you get nothing, including fans then I doubt it's the CPU.


No argument on the parts you've selected, in fact I own that very CPU.

 

Thanks Mekanic. That's reassuring. Seemed pretty reasonable price for something that can cope with pretty well everything.

I sort of thought it was either/or CPU/motherboard but with my luck I would identify the MB as faulty get another to suit the CPU and then find it was the CPU and end up spending over £100 anyway, so for another £100 or so I've got a new upgrade PC. I've ordered the bits, I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks for your support.

 

Hi Mekanic and all. All is well! Rebuilt the whole thing with the CPU and board in my last post. Fired up ok and took the old OS installation, although I had my Win10 disc at hand and was ready to reinstall, but I think I have been lucky and all seems ok after running the driver disc for the Graphics card and the MB. Only issue I have is that my Win 10 is not activated which doesn't stop me doing anything (so far!) as it picks up personalisation for my Win 10 tablet.

Thanks so much for your help and advice!

 

Spoke too soon.... I run 2 19" monitors from my pc. One has packed up this morning, cant get a spark of life from it! Looks like I am pretty well replacing the whole system!

 

Like I always say, if it ain't one thing, it's something else!

My UPS has been giving me an F06 error sporadically, and we've got a hurricane on our doorstep. Nothing like perfect timing...:-D