Dead motherboard? Lanparty UT nF3 250gb

[Horrido]

Sunday my PC shut down on its own, and now will not boot. The power LED on the board is lit, but pressing the power button will do nothing. The DRAM LED is not lit. I removed all perifials except one stick of RAM, and the CPU - still nothing. I removed the ram stick - still nothing. I removed the CPU - now everything is removed except power supply and speaker wire - still nothing. Not even error beeps. Am I supposed to get an error code with no CPU? I swaped power supplies with another computer here - still nothing. While the original power supply was connected to the 2nd computer I checked 3 and 5 volts on both rails - they were good. I reset the CMOS by removing the battery and setting the appropriate jumper for 30 minutes - no effect. I checked the battery - shows 3 volts, so is good I think. I am really stumped. THe board is only 7 months old, and has been stable. The system has never been overclocked.

 

Is my motherboard dead? Could this be a bad CPU? What else can I try?

 

Do I need the original packaging to return the board for warrenty work (if its the MB)? I tossed the box about a month ago.

 

How long does warrenty repair take - I am REALLY going through withdrawels. My daughter's PC is just not powerful enough for me.

 

My system....

 

 

MB DFI LANPARTY UT nF3 250GB

CPU AMD 64 3400+ ATHLON 64

RAM - DDRAM 512M|PC-3200 991093 MUSHKIN R (2 sticks)

Vidoe - Gigabyte 6800GT 256M GV-N68T256DH

Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB 3.5" Serial ATA150 qty 2 in RAID 0

2 other older IDE hard drives

DVD writer BENQ 1620

Power supply - Fortran FSP530-60GNA (530watt)

CASE LIANLI PC-7 B Plus RT

floppy, couple case fans, USB mouse, ect

Windows XP Pro, SP2

 

Not sure what version of BIOS I have - it was the original. Board was purchased in Nov 04 from Newegg

[mindbuzz]

Are you sure the power LED is lit? Maybe you have a faulty power button.

[Horrido]

Power LED is definately lit - I think its labeled 'stand by power' in the manual. I have unhooked all leads to the case (except the speaker), and am using the switch on the board.

[dacosa]

it verifies all the connections, it consults the manual and it watches the part of the button reset. To make clear cmos

greetings

[Horrido]

A bit more info...

 

Due to the current heat wave the USA is seeing, my air connditioning bill cost me about $60 last month. I'm on a tight budget, so we quit using the air about a week ago. When the board shut down, the ambient was about 10 degrees above where it normally runs - probably about 85 deg F in the room. Normal CPU temp as reported by software is 41 deg C - I'm not sure what it was when it failed. My cooling is the stock AMD cooler shipped with the CPU (its a retail package).

 

I've been spending the last few hours searching for similar problems on this forum. Seems there are a few similar problems, but very little resolution. I did run across two seperate people who had very similar problems.

 

Not sure if its related, but earlier in the day I tried using the firewire port for the first time, with no sucess. At the time, I atributed to an interuppt conflict, so gave up, with intentions of resolving it at a future time. Normally I dissable the firewire in network adapters. After screwing around with it for a few hours, I again dissabled it, and everything seemed fine until later that evening. Normally I wouldnt even mention this, but another person had a similar failure after unsucessfully trying a Rio on a USB port. Probably unrelated but worth a mention.

 

In another post I found in the newsgroups, a person had an identical problem. While gaming, his PC shut down. When he tried to reboot, the fan on the 6800gt turned slightly, then stoped. Standby LED was lit. This is exactly what was happening to me.

 

Not sure where to go from here. I'm trying to drain/reset the cmos right now (again).

 

Big question for me is - is it the CPU or the MB? I'm going to try different combinations of RAM and RAM banks now too. Any help would be appreciated.

[hkalex]

hi there,

i got a same problem last week, but mine can start for one time only sometimes, after that, it cant, i mean after shut down.

 

the Standby LED is on, but the DRAM LED is not...i have check it over, maybe the DRAM Controller is gone mad...cos the VDimm sometimes supply 2.3V, sometimes 3.0V...really mad...

 

also the protecting circuit of the chipset fan was damaged....i have sent it to RMA already

dont know why will it happened

[Horrido]

A few more bits of info... The fan will not spin at all anymore - for a few iterations at the begining of the problem it did make maybe an 1/8th of a turn.

 

The lights on my keyboard WILL flash for about 1/2 sec. Is there a thremal shutdown that fails and will not reset? Is this a current overlaod issues? I've got a decent multimeter - can I check current draw anywhere? I'd hate to return the motherboard if the CPU is bad.

 

So... my guess, its either a corrupt BIOS, or a failed component on the board, or the CPU.

 

Anyone know if the original packaging is required to warrenty return a DFI board? Mine is gone, and to return it, I'd have to buy a 2nd MB just to get the box- and THAT is definatley not in my budget.

[duckdown]

Your PSU might be toast.

Maybe a power outage caused it or something..

 

Have you tried the PSU on another computer, and if not, there is a way to use a paper clip to start it up on its own..

 

Maybe not enough juice from the wall socket

[RGone]

Forgot I had this. Do exactly as stated or the outcome results will be stilted.

 

This is what Oskar_Wu recommanded and it worked for me: (after several bios resets i might add)

 

1 . Take off the board , remove any thing including retention kit come with the board

2 . Turn the board to back side and check carefully if there is anything short between all the DIMM/AGP slot pin ...

3 . Put only the MB on an safe platform , remove AC power cord first

4 . Plug the ATX 20 pin and ATX +12V 4 pin power connector

5 . Install the cpu , put the cpu heatsink on it carefully

6 . Install one DIMM in DIMM3

7 . Plug the spreaker or buzzer on the front panel connector

8 . Plug the AC power cord

9 . Boot up the mainboard to see if there is any beep sound

10 . No beep sound or continous long beep sound ? Return it to your reseller and ask for an exchange ASAP ...

11 . 3 short beep sound ? Turn off the power and install the video card , it should be able to boot with display card if there is 3 short beep sound without video card on the MB ...

 

 

This 3 short sound beep was more like:

 

------------------ _ _ _

 

So a long beep ending with 3 very short beeps.

Try the above and reset bios a couple of times, after i got it to boot, i turned it off, killed standby power and added another stick in slot 1, rebooted just fine.

 

 

RGone...

 

For clarity:

1. Remove motherboard from case.

3. Motherboard place on insulated surface wood or cardboard come to mind.

[Horrido]

I've already pulled the board out of the case and tried as you described. Tonight I will examine closer for shorts, although I have my doubts due to the fact that the board failed in the middle of a gaming session. Perhaps dust is causing a problem.

 

Returning the board to newegg is a no-go, as I don't have the packaging. If DFI can't help me dirrectly, I will probably buy another Lanparty nF3, and use the packaging to return the defective board. Maybe I can sell the extra board.

 

At this point, what I really need to know is what are the requirements for warrenty returns, and what is the turn around time? If we are talking months, then I will have to buy another board.

 

At any rate, thanks for all the responses.