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I've had a P8Z77-V LK asus motherboard for at least 3 to 4 years now, and everything ran fine. My ancient PSU that ran like a champ finally kicked the bucket about two months ago, and I replaced it with a EVGA 750G2, and everything worked fine. However, last week, my PC quit booting.
I've finally found time to troubleshoot and I'm thinking I've pinned it down to the general memory region. In the past I ran the system with 2 4GB ram sticks that were compatible. In troubleshooting, I found that doing things with memory changes what's going on in the errors.
With one, when I install it into a slot the recommended 1 stick slot, I get a solid DRAM_LED. The case fans and CPU continue running, but do not output anything to the screen as it is hung up on the memory issue (note, I even uninstalled my graphics card and tried with onboard). As far as I can tell, this solid light is perpetual until I press the "MemOK!" button (note I never get the short startup beep). At which point the system reboots, and I get a short beep indicating startup, followed by a continuous beep (all continuous beep cases flash the DRAM_LED light on for probably a half second when I press the power switch, at which point the light shuts off). Case fans and CPU keep going, and this case speaker beep continues on for however long the system is on, with nothing output to the screen. DRAM_LED light is now off. After doing this in the first slot, moving it to any position causes the excruciating beep immediately after the first power on beep.
When I switch to the other, (I assume MemOK "saves" unless powered down for a long time), any slot I put it in does the excruciating beep.
I live chatted with an Asus tech support guy, and he basically told me "uh, pop out CMOS battery for 15 minutes, put it back in? Iunno lol". I did that, no change. Then he told me "I can't help you unless you get another RAM stick and try that"
Manual says nothing about this beep that never stops until you force the system to shut down. It has specific beeps for RAM sticks that aren't working/compatible.
Please help. Should I just buy a new motherboard? I want to be sure that will fix the issue (Poor senior in college without that kind of cash to throw around accidentally building a new system until I find the problem)
Sorry for the long winded post.
Note that I even stripped away all peripherals. There's no SATA cables plugging into the motherboard. The only things plugging into the back of the PC are a DVI cable, a PS/2 keyboard, and a power cord. Inside, all that's plugged into the motherboard are the 1 or 2 RAM sticks as I troubleshoot, a CPU, fans controls, and power connections.
brandonman
Posted 2015-09-14T22:16:15.593
Reputation: 1
Swap the RAM sticks. If no change, reseat the CPU. It's impossible for us to tell you what the problem is when you can't even test it yourself – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-14T23:22:32.303
I've swapped out the RAM sticks into each individual Slot on the motherboard, and in every possible 2 stick combination as well, as I noted in the question. A CPU issue would be throwing up a CPU error from the motherboard, as are noted in its manual. – brandonman – 2015-09-14T23:39:54.577
As for CPU reseating, my hope was to see if anybody was familiar with this situation and knew for sure. If all else fails I'll buy a thermal paste tube and try reseating the whole shebang, but I'm convinced that's not the issue at all. The CPU is firmly in place, the fan is running fine, and if it were an issue with the heatsink to CPU connection, it would be killing its power, not throwing out a perpetual beep for however long I leave the system on. Not to mention I'm seeing no difference between having let it cool down to room temp versus starting and restarting, compared to heatsink issues – brandonman – 2015-09-14T23:42:50.130
After running MemOK again, and allowing it to cycle, it stopped restarting to cycle MemOK tests. Waited quite a while, killed the power and restarted, and now it's just cycling reboots - Fans go, CPU fan goes, runs for a second, and shuts off with no beeps, no led indicators, nothing. Tried doing the CMOS battery removal to reset BIOS with no luck. – brandonman – 2015-09-15T00:08:55.270
Looks like either a faulty CPU or mainboard then, if you've tried reseating it. The mainboard would only report a CPU error under certain, severe CPU issues, such as a missing or completely unresponsive CPU. A corroded or weak contact on one RAM data line or one faulty part of the CPU (e.g. part of the RAM controller) will be unlikely to trigger it. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-10-05T15:49:33.587
Just as a final followup, it was indeed a faulty motherboard. I replaced the board and everything worked fine. – brandonman – 2015-11-12T20:35:26.853