Motherboard failure

[miokomioko]

Ok, I hope this isn't too lengthy, but I am having issues assembling my new PC and I am trying to narrow down what exactly the issue is so I can return the appropriate parts or possibly even fix something I'm royally fucking up.

So, I got the following important parts:

Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P Motherboard (new)
3.4GHz AMD Phenom-II 4x Black Edition CPU (new)
4GB RAM (new)

850W Power Supply (new)

PCIe e-Ge-Force 8800 GT Graphics Card (old)
PCIe Radeon HD 4670 Graphics Card (new)

Seagate 1.5-TB SATA Hard Drive (new)
Seagate 500-GB IDE Hard Drive (old)
Something-or-Other IDE CD/DVD Drive (old)

So... After assemblying everthing... board, cpu, ram, heatsink, power supply, 2 old drives and 1 new, and the new crappy graphics card (for the time being)... After plugging everything in and making sure there were no brackets touching the bottom of the motherboard or any other obvious shorts, I powered it up. The old IDE drive was my master, and the IDE DVD drive was on slave, as was the new SATA hard drive. It booted up and I got the single, happy beep and saw the ugly graphic bios screen and such. It began to load my Windows XP that was on my old IDE drive and then it beeped and rebooted.

It repeatedly got to the Windows XP screen and would immediately reboot. I thought "meh, I guess I'll just go ahead and get to installing Windows XP on the big SATA drive now since I was going to eventually." So, I go into the BIOS setup and set the time/date and primary boot drive and all that typical crap and set it to the CD/DVD drive, put the Windows XP disc in and saved the settings and rebooted. (at this time, the system had probably been on and running for 10 minutes tops)

Then it booted the BIOS junk and proceeded to boot off of the Windows XP DVD and began chugging along with the installation process. It began checking the files to install and I don't think it got far through that when I was turned around getting a Pepsi (no one was even touching the system whatsoever) and the power just shut off abruptly.

It no longer turns on. Flipping the power supply's switch off then on and hitting the power button would just yield a short blink of the LEDs and maybe one rotation of the case's/cpu's /graphic card's fans and then be dead. I immediately assumed the power supply took a shit because I had recently had a number of issues with power supplies and I noticed the box for this one said "reconditioned" which I was not aware of.

So, I ran out and bought another power supply (750W this time) and tried that out with only identical results. I began trying to elminate variables by unplugging periphials like hard drives and such and it had no effect. The bottom line was these results with just the motherboard/cpu laying on the table:

No matter what the combination was of having the graphics card in/out, RAM in/out, and the CPU in/out, the 12V cord from the power supply to the CPU power on the motherboard caused the Power Supply to not turn on. I have to have a graphics card in the PCIe slot to get any results at all, as I'm assuming it was one of the things that required a draw of power to tell the power supply to even turn on. It's just that the CPU having power is causing everthing to just stay dead. Now, this made me think that the CPU could be bad, so I took that out completely and had the same exact results.

So, the problem happened after like 10 minutes of working when no one was even touching the system or anything related to it. That makes me assume a part went bad as it got warm, but I don't think that was even enough time to get up to anywhere near operating temperature. I've narrowed down the issue to having something to do with the 12V AXT (?) port that receives power for the CPU somehow being shorted out somewhere... I have no idea other than that.

RAM in/out didn't affect the results.
CPU in/out didn't affect the results.
Using different graphics cards didn't affect the results.
No drives were plugged in at all.

Basically, the Power Supply turns on and works (even powers the graphics card) as long as a graphics card is in the PCIe slot and the CPU part of the motherboard is not receiving any power.

Any ideas before I answer a million form questions from shitty Tiger Direct customer service? :[

[Milks]

Your power supply didn't actually fry anything did it?

[Cartman34]

Well my english is not good but,clear comos data and check bios settings after that try install win xp to yours new SATA drive and unplug ide cables from yours old hard drives you can plug ide cables back when you have installed XP succesfully? and set CD/DVD drive to master. If u managed to install XP and everything works shutdown and plug IDE HD drives again

[miokomioko]

I can't be certain whether or not anything on the motherboard was fried by the power supply or not. (Nothing is visibly toasted, though I have seen that on an old graphics card.) My only reasoning behind it not being fried was the fact that the power supply was on and everything was appearing to be in working condition for a good 10 minutes. The only condition I could imagine would have changed in that period that could have affected anything power-wise was either the parts warming up or current going to the CPU/Case/etc fans to speed them up as the temperature raised. I wouldn't imagine that a power supply would fry something abruptly after 10 minutes of working correctly, but I suppose I could be wrong.

If it is fried, at least I have localized the problem part to something that receives power from that little 8-pin 12V ATX cable thing (that looks like the image below, top right corner of the "ultra durable" heatsink). I'm almost certain that this is what powers the CPU, but I am not sure if anything else receives power from it.

[fishstix]

On my old computer, it'd shut off completely without any error messages sometimes randomly, other times when I try to access too many things off of the hard drive. Replacing the motherboard fixed this. I know it's not exactly the same issue or problem, but if you were to return/RMA something, I'd probably start with the motherboard.

btw what brand power supplies did you use? the 850 and 750

[miokomioko]

I'm getting to the point where I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to return this motherboard... I hope they aren't assholes about it since I'm sure it's so damn easy for anyone to ruin parts like this if you don't know what you're doing. I had just recently heard some pissed guy at a Fry's Electronics yelling because he was being asked to sign a waiver that said he couldn't return the board he was buying. I don't make these hardware purchases often, as you can see. I'm just certain that it wasn't user error, but I can't figure out what exactly failed and why. My father is an engineer (semiconductor industry) and his only answer is something along the lines of "there's a lot of different parts that can fail and for no apparent reason, also usually within the first 24 hours of their lives." I am just hoping Tiger Direct's customer service isn't just some bitch reading questions from a sheet about whether I plugged it in or not while not knowing a thing about computers.

The 850W was an OCZ (the one that possibly borked it) and the 750W I got afterwards was an Antec.

[Kurp]

I've had a DOA motherboard that acted very similar to what you describe. It would light LEDs and spin fans for less than one second before it powered down again. I RMA'd it for another which worked perfectly.

I've never dealt with Tiger Direct, but Newegg has replaced faulty hardware without hassle for me a few times.

[LiquidFriend]

Had no problems with TigerDirect RMA in the past.

For the hell of it, try this. Take the mobo out and attempt running it on something like the cardboard box it came in to make sure there's no grounding issue.

To echo everyone else, it does sound like a botched mobo.

[Weeks]

Yeah, when my motherboard died while I was changing power supplies it acted very similarly. Good news is that even if Tiger Direct fucks you on the RMA, Gigabyte has a 3 year warranty on their motherboards. Bad news is that it takes a solid month in my experience.

[Olo401]

Hmmm... There's a chance it's not the board but to be sure try this:

- Reseat your CPU, making sure it goes into the socket without resistance and doesn't rock once it's in there. If you get some movement or have bad seating, check the pins underneath for any bends or breaks. If you have a bent pin, a mechanical pencil w/ the lead removed can be used to straighten it but BE CAREFUL!
- Take out all the memory, reinsert it one stick at a time and try to boot. If one of 'em works, then you know you have a faulty DIMM. If none of them work, it's the board.

It's probably not a BIOS problem, because the board would boot to the backup BIOS if the first one was faulty or had screwy settings (one of the reasons I like Gigabyte's boards).

[miokomioko]

The CPU fits like a glove, no bent pins or anything.

The only thing I spotted, but I ruled out that it probably wasn't the issue, was some thermal compound squeezed out the side of the heatsink/cpu and perhaps touched the side of the cpu face, maybe even the CPU's circuit board edge, possibly the plastic CPU socket. I know it didn't get to one any the pins while it was powered up (it did after I pulled it back out to clean it) but I don't think any of those things could have shorted it out, not to mention I don't believe the goo is conductive. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I got a RMA for the board and stepped up a notch to the crossfire-ready model while praying it's not my CPU because they won't return that and I'll have to deal with AMD.