Need some advise
The details of my rig can be found in this thread over in the CPU section
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2155564
Post #84 from that thread is also a summation of my recent experience.
Here we go
Last night I came home from work and went to turn my computer on. I pressed the power button and I could hear the fans spin up, but the motherboard did not “beep” and the system would not POST. There was no video output and based on the LED on my case, it did not seem the system ran through its standard startup into Windows 7.
I shut everything down and then opened the case. At a glance everything looked fine. So I attempted to power up again. There are a number of LED’s on the Sabertooth motherboard which light up momentarily during startup. Each LED is tied to a system on the motherboard (CPU, GPU, Memory, etc). The manual indicates that if a light comes on, and stays on, that is an indication of an error in that system. The LED’s are suppose to just light up for a second, and turn off, which indicates the system checks out, and Is running correctly.
So I go to start it up, and all of the LED’s cycle through as expected, EXCEPT, the GPU LED does nothing. It doesn’t even illuminate at all. Operating under the assumption that I had a GPU issue I took both of my video cards out to inspect them (R6950’s in crossfire). When I touched the lower of the two GPU’s to remove it, I saw a blue spark arc from the PCB to motherboard. Perhaps this was static? Anyway, I took the cards out, they both looked fine, not burns on the PCB’s, no visual damage. So I attempted to start the system with each card isolated (no crossfire). Neither card worked.
Next I figured I would reset the CMOS. So I reseated the reset jumper on the Mobo, waited a few seconds, and then changed it back. Next I attempted to restart the computer without any GPU installed, just to see if the GPU LED on the Mobo illuminated. Sure enough it did!
So I put one of the Radeon in, and BOOM, the system came up, it booted normally. I ran through a few quick benchmarking suites… CPU, temps, SSD data transfer, everything operated as expected. I shut down the system, swapped GPU’s, and once again the system booted no problem. Finally I installed both GPU’s, hooked up the Crossfire Bridge, and pressed the power button….. The mobo cycled through its startup, the GPU led illuminated and then turned off (system check OK), and I was faced with the Windows 7 login screen. I opened up GPUZ, jumped into Deus Ex HR, everything ran fine. When I left the game, GPUZ indicated that both Radeons were operating at 100% with crossfire enabled.
I thought I was out of the woods.
So I started watching the a motor sports race from last weekend, 1080p MKV file, about 10 minutes into it, the system had a hard shutdown. It just went black. I flipped the power switch on the back of the PSU, let it sit for a few moments, flipped it back to the on position, and pressed the power button on the case. The system booted normally.
So here I am, wondering what is going on. Does this sound like a GPU issue, a Mobo issue, and PSU issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve got a small foam shim placed below the outer front (front of case, away from the mobo) corner of the lower Radeon to prevent it from sagging and touching the bottom of the case. Could this be the problem? When I first installed it (months ago). The foam was pretty rigid. I noticed at the first crash that the shim had squashed down to almost nothing over time (the video cards are pretty heavy). When I finally got the computer up and running I left the shim out. Without it, the lower GPU sagged almost to the point of touching the case. [The shim is slightly visible in a picture on the first page of the linked thread above] It was after I removed the shim, that I got the computer up and running briefly until I started playing the MKV file. When I got the hard reset, I inserted a new shim to support the card… since then I haven’t had any issues (I finished watching the MKV file last night, which took about 2 hours). This morning the computer seems fine… But I am fearful of the next crash.
Sorry for the novel.
Thanks in advance.
The details of my rig can be found in this thread over in the CPU section
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2155564
Post #84 from that thread is also a summation of my recent experience.
Here we go
Last night I came home from work and went to turn my computer on. I pressed the power button and I could hear the fans spin up, but the motherboard did not “beep” and the system would not POST. There was no video output and based on the LED on my case, it did not seem the system ran through its standard startup into Windows 7.
I shut everything down and then opened the case. At a glance everything looked fine. So I attempted to power up again. There are a number of LED’s on the Sabertooth motherboard which light up momentarily during startup. Each LED is tied to a system on the motherboard (CPU, GPU, Memory, etc). The manual indicates that if a light comes on, and stays on, that is an indication of an error in that system. The LED’s are suppose to just light up for a second, and turn off, which indicates the system checks out, and Is running correctly.
So I go to start it up, and all of the LED’s cycle through as expected, EXCEPT, the GPU LED does nothing. It doesn’t even illuminate at all. Operating under the assumption that I had a GPU issue I took both of my video cards out to inspect them (R6950’s in crossfire). When I touched the lower of the two GPU’s to remove it, I saw a blue spark arc from the PCB to motherboard. Perhaps this was static? Anyway, I took the cards out, they both looked fine, not burns on the PCB’s, no visual damage. So I attempted to start the system with each card isolated (no crossfire). Neither card worked.
Next I figured I would reset the CMOS. So I reseated the reset jumper on the Mobo, waited a few seconds, and then changed it back. Next I attempted to restart the computer without any GPU installed, just to see if the GPU LED on the Mobo illuminated. Sure enough it did!
So I put one of the Radeon in, and BOOM, the system came up, it booted normally. I ran through a few quick benchmarking suites… CPU, temps, SSD data transfer, everything operated as expected. I shut down the system, swapped GPU’s, and once again the system booted no problem. Finally I installed both GPU’s, hooked up the Crossfire Bridge, and pressed the power button….. The mobo cycled through its startup, the GPU led illuminated and then turned off (system check OK), and I was faced with the Windows 7 login screen. I opened up GPUZ, jumped into Deus Ex HR, everything ran fine. When I left the game, GPUZ indicated that both Radeons were operating at 100% with crossfire enabled.
I thought I was out of the woods.
So I started watching the a motor sports race from last weekend, 1080p MKV file, about 10 minutes into it, the system had a hard shutdown. It just went black. I flipped the power switch on the back of the PSU, let it sit for a few moments, flipped it back to the on position, and pressed the power button on the case. The system booted normally.
So here I am, wondering what is going on. Does this sound like a GPU issue, a Mobo issue, and PSU issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve got a small foam shim placed below the outer front (front of case, away from the mobo) corner of the lower Radeon to prevent it from sagging and touching the bottom of the case. Could this be the problem? When I first installed it (months ago). The foam was pretty rigid. I noticed at the first crash that the shim had squashed down to almost nothing over time (the video cards are pretty heavy). When I finally got the computer up and running I left the shim out. Without it, the lower GPU sagged almost to the point of touching the case. [The shim is slightly visible in a picture on the first page of the linked thread above] It was after I removed the shim, that I got the computer up and running briefly until I started playing the MKV file. When I got the hard reset, I inserted a new shim to support the card… since then I haven’t had any issues (I finished watching the MKV file last night, which took about 2 hours). This morning the computer seems fine… But I am fearful of the next crash.
Sorry for the novel.
Thanks in advance.
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