pc issue...
 

i just looking for some advice...

i just built a new pc last december and have problems since. yesterday all was good. today i went to game a bit and there was no screen. i checked inside and the vid cards fans werent spinning (vid 2). my iniitial thought, vid card right?! i actually had another vid card (vid 1) so i put that in, still nothing. this is an entirely new set-up...

asrock x570 creator
amd 3900x
thermaltake power supply 1200 platnum
vid 1 - amd 5700xt rtx
vid 2 - geforece 2080 rtx

so right now, the cpu lights come on. it has an rgb fan that comes on fine. lights on the motherboard come on fine, i get some error codes but then they stop. i tried two different lines on the ps and the same situation...just nothing from the vid card, no spinning or lights. my assumption is this is the motherboard or the power supply. i think motherboard...

thoughts?

Do you have a Multi Meter to measure if the specialized PS connectors that supply auxilliary power to the video cards still has proper power? Sometimes those lines are fused so you could get lucky but I'd check that first. Since the only power problem exists only on both video cards it has to be quite specific to those lanes and since the "normal" mainboard power is commonly shared between all PCIe slots, the only thing I know for sure perfectly specific is those two supply connectors.

With any issues, always check the simplest things first. In the instance of hardware, that would be the power supply. @enorbet's suggestion above is where you'd want to go first.

here is how this has gone...

two days ago, wednesday, everything fine...gamed on it a bit and then had some updates and needed to restart so i did. thursday i get on and dead, no vid. checked on the inside and noticed the fans on the vid card were not running and the lights were out. i assumed it was the vid card so i tried an amd 5700xt, no fans or lights either. then i tried a second pci slot, my motherboard has 3, still nothing on both cards. when i plug in the power suppply, i did notice some leds go on on the vid cards but the main lighting, the name lights up on both vid cards, does not.

then i started checking codes on the motherboard, first it said sata issues, so i unplugged all sata. then it said vid card issues. so then i started thinking motherboard. okay so my pc, all the wires are black on the power supply so i cant tell which wire is which however i do have 4 pci slots on it (the psu) and i tried all to no alleviation.

so i pulled out ye olde multimeter, ye olde fan and ye olde paperclip and pulled all plugs off the motherboard, jumped the 3 & 4 and connected the fan. i checked every pin on the 24 according to...

http://www.smpspowersupply.com/power-supply.html

and checked everything on the pcie 8 according to...

https://www.moddiy.com/pages/Power-S...d-Pinouts.html

and the 12s measured 12.18, 3.3 measured 3.334 and the 5s were good on in every case. i also tried multiple pcie plugs and everything was perfect via the power supply. now, i did not take off the motherboard the cpu or ram but the last error code i got when i went to the website for asrock was tied to vid card issue.

now, i think, according to my wisdom, did a pretty thorough check of the power supply and the issue here me thinks is the motherboard. i have just never had an issue like this before. the last time a motherboard failed it just died and it has happened only once of the dozens i have owned but i think i have isolated everything and it must be the motherboard here...do you agree or is there something i am missing?

sorry, i mistyped. i originally had...
i changed it, the 5v was good in every case.

by the way, people said the fan on should load the psu to give its output. without sometimes it doesnt give output or something.

Are you missing something? Not really. You've done a pretty thorough check. The easiest way to check the PSU for sure would be to swap out with known good one. If all's well with the tester PSU, then you've located your problem. If same with tester PSU, then your thoughts leaning toward a failed mobo (for whatever reason) are probably accurate. A minor issue such as a shorted electrolytic cap (check for swollen/leaking canisters) could definitely load down the entire 5v supply.

I could not tell for sure by what you posted above, but when checking the PSU outputs, you should have ALL connections to any other components in the system disconnected (total isolation). If you have 5v when PSU is isolated, your PSU is probably fine.

Keep us in the loop regarding your troubleshooting progress. Thanks.

~Eric

First off, all your gear is first rate and most importantly the PS is very high quality. I didn't suspect it but that had to be a known good before going any further. It seems it is working properly if we understand each other about the separate supply connections directly to video cards NOT thru the mobo. Given those are working fine yet there is a lack of power to parts of the graphics card(s) while it could be a mobo hardware failure, it could also be a BIOS/CMOS failure.

I have a lot of really deep experience with PC hardware troubleshooting and repair yet I can't explain why it seems that ever since the move to the more advanced EFI type BIOS (as opposed to Legacy) there are far more reports of BIOS failure even to the extent that many mobo manufacturers, Asrock included (I have a Z77 Ectreme 4), now make mobos with a backup BIOS chip as default chip complement. I used to be an avid and aggressive overclocker but for a few years now I barely OC at all (12% CPU only) but still have seven fans to keep my PC extraordinarily cool but with no other errors, bad temps, no warning whatsoever (and I keep extensive monitors up at all times) my Asrock started to have reboot problems made all the more vague by how rarely I ever shutdown or reboot. After months of weirdness I finally realized it was BIOS, bought a ne chip and everything is great again. At the very same time an Intel Mobo based system I built for my Son started failing and it, too, turned out to be a BIOS issue.

The fact that you are getting error codes bouncing all about leads me to believe that is worth checking before you decide the whole mobo is defunct. I checked the Users Manual for your Asrock Creator and don't see a backup BIOS chip but it might be worthwhile to contact your seller to see if a replacement chip is available and at what cost, if it's not under warranty. If it is under warranty it's a tossup whether to go for the chip or full mobo replacement. If the mobo has been running really well up until recently, that being a known good, I might go for the BIOS chip replacement first. If it isn't a major deal with shipping costs etc then whole mobo replacement might be wise, but it does seem something onboard the mobo is not working correctly. The only other specific culprits I can think of are VR chips and/or filter caps that supply voltage lines to the 3 x 16x PCIe slots and no other locations like the remaining PCIe x1 slots.

Hope this helps some.

TLDR - BIOS chip in any case or whole Mainboard if under warranty

BIOS? Interesting. I hadn't thought about that. I don't have any experience with the newer BIOSes, so I would definitely be paying attention to @enorbet's posting above.

awesome, thanks for the help. i did eye over (quickly) the capacitors and didnt see any that looked blown. the pc right now will not even go into the bios. i get nothing when i turn it on, just cpu fan and motherboard error codes by the dozens. now part of that is because no vid card so i couldnt see if it did but also, usually you hear a little noise from the cpu and i hear nothing coming from it, just the fans.

my motherboard is under warranty. i think i am going to rma it. unfortunately that is going to be a month and this is the second time i have rma'ed it since i bought it (the first was a networking issue). i am really down on asrock. if i could fine a decent alternative with 10G networking, i might just buy it and throw this piece of garbage away because i need a working windope pc right now.

at any rate, i really appreciate the help on this, it sounds solved to me. i think you guys nailed it and i feel comfortable it is the motherboard again!

I don't know of any noise a CPU makes other than fans. I recall working on a DEC Alpha based system which at the time was running at 500MHz with no fan cooling while the best Intel made was @ 200 MHz and people were a bit shocked it required it's own, massive by standards then, fan. The Alpha was dead silent other than the initial single "I'm awake!" beep from BIOS.

Although I'd be careful about getting down on a reasonably reputable company even for two failures in a row as that could just be bad luck happenstance or the entire industry adapting to a more complex BIOS chip and system. My BIOS chip was $23 USD and this Asrock system has been up almost continuously (uptimes in many months) for close to a decade. That said, I have been flirting with the idea of buying one of Super-Micro's Gaming mobos for a long time now. I've owned several of their mobos, both Desktop and Server models and all of them have been incredibly reliable and functional. They are still manufactured in the US and all boards use server quality components and construction which of course makes them more expensive than similarly featured brands made in China. I have also had decent luck with Asus but found their reliability and function are proportional to price as they make a wider variety of qualities. I have no direct, long term experience with Gigabyte but their decent reputation seems reflected in how few came across my repair desk given how long they've been around and how popular they are.

Supermicro doesn't make any AMD based mobos but this is an example of the quality in a 10G board ----

https://www.supermicro.com/en/produc...ard/C9Z390-PGW

-- OR --

https://www.supermicro.com/en/produc...rd/C7X99-OCE-F

These are for reference only since it seems you are more in the AMD camp but I should mention that Asrock stands right up there with Asus and Gigabyte in the eyes of the longest reigning hardware reviewers like Toms Hardware and Anandtech. True they rarely spend much thought and space for less popular brands but the very fact that Asrock is even in the running with long-standing champs like Asus and Gigabyte has to count for something.

Hopefully your seller will treat you with the care and respect warranted by people who demand the very best.

OH, and to quote ol' Steve Jobs, "One more thing!"... 10G is about to explode. It has suffered a slow acceptance among commercial mobo manufacturers because of the price on peripherals that were all at Enterprise level and PRICE. There are now PCIe cards out with 10G capability so it's time down here in User Land has come.

my problem with asrock is not the quality of the boards but the quality of their customer service. HALF of the emails i have sent have just not been returned or not acknowledged at all. every time i search for a way to contact them i come up with a different way and there is no response from them. after i finally got a hold of someone there and had a way to contact them just for a little techinical support to make sure it wasnt something i was missing, they just didnt reply. no response is just typical of them.

then, on top of that, after i finally got my board rma'ed and sent in, at which i had to pay the cost even after i was having such trouble with the board they put on the market, they just sent back the same one. they said they switched it with a new one but i am certain i got the same board back. they claimed they thoroughly checked it and it was good...two weeks later it stopped starting.

i recall back in college the last time a board under warranty died. i was a biostar. when i contacted them i got an immediate response. they gave me a return label at their expense and returned every email question they had. an "elite" board maker like asrock, an off-shoot of asus, couldnt even give me average customer serivce. i mean, their customer service is just crap! it is not the initial quality, it is if something does go wrong, well, you will figure out how awful they are!

and having 10G is so nice. i back-up my plex which is over 10tb. on my gig network it would just bog everything down but now that i have 10g, it takes less than a day to back it all up without any noticable loss of bandwidth on my network. SO NICE!

Well if service is what you want there are few companies doing better than Supermicro. There have been a few complaints posted on Reddit channels about lack of driver updates for Win10 and slow POST/Boot process and even on Reddit Supermicro service responded and posted links to the proper service channels for their problems. How many companies have you even heard of bothering to respond to service complaints anywhere else but the manufacturer's website? and given your lack of response from Asrock, even when people do? I think that's one of the values and expectations for companies whose main business is with Enterprise servers.