Show Us Your Rig [4]

[linnemeyerhere]

I was floored that my Bios updated version wasn't updated and that leaves a real chicken or the egg issue....at least it did for me until I drove it to MSI and they updated it in like 2 minutes.

 

[kbrady1979]

the errant screw may be lodged between mobo components LF, shorting it.

That is the first thing that popped in my head after I read about the problem. I would look there before I made a bunch of changes, just to be 100% sure.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The only way I'll be able to check the board any closer for the idiot screw than I already have is to take it out, a major chore. I doubt the bios version is a problem because it worked fine when I bench tested it. I'll deal with it tomorrow,

 

[essenbe]

Plus, that board was made for only 1 type CPU, it shouldn't need a bios update to post.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I finally found the miserable, misbegotten screw (after drawing blood). It was hiding between the front panel audio connector and the metal housing the rear I/O audio jacks. Fished it out, turned on the power, hit the on switch, and got the same damned thing. I'm stumped.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Good I didn't realize it had been bench tested. I would pull everything not essential to the boot from the mobo. Also re-seat all essential items. Personally I'd be very surprised it was that loose screw.....but stranger things have happened. Good luck and steady wins the race. It will turn out to be something really silly.....stay with it and we're here to help!

 

[essenbe]

I finally found the miserable, misbegotten screw (after drawing blood). It was hiding between the front panel audio connector and the metal housing the rear I/O audio jacks. Fished it out, turned on the power, hit the on switch, and got the same damned thing. I'm stumped.

Well done. That just proves that it was Gremlins that hid the screw, but the Leprechauns helped you find it. It was always my understanding that Leprechauns only did good, it was the Gremlins who were the bad ones. But, when you bench tested the board, did you leave the ram and CPU cooler attached when you installed it into the case? We can go through the obvious trouble shooting with you, but that would insult your intelligence, and none of us would want to do that. But, Thomas Edison once that people need to be reminded more often than taught. If you would like us to start, we would be happy to. After all, that's what we do here. Just let us know how we can help and you will be inundated with suggestions. Right Guys?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Don't EVER worry about insulting me with suggestions (the same with backseat driving; even if the backseat driver sees something I didn't only once in a hundred times, it makes the other 99 times welcome)! I'm new enough at this to easily get in trouble over something obvious to you all.

Actually, leprechauns tend to be quite troublesome. They are the Irish cousins to gremlins, poltergeists, and minnahoonies.

Yes, the RAM and CPU cooler were still attached when I put the board in the case. I had no choice in this matter because one of the cooler's mounting screws is inaccessable one in the case. If I ever have to pull the cooler, the board will have to come out. What really burns my backside (besides a 3' flame) is the other sockets that the cooler is designed to fit allow the use of nuts on the bottom of the MOBO to attach the cooler and my case has a humongous opening behind the MOBO with all kinds of open acreage around the socket (mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble).

I started pulling cables and finally got the board to start up on top of my washing machine (no monitor or keyboard/mouse) when I pulled the front panel connectors in the lower right corner. I'll figure which one was the culprit later.

Thanks for the encouragement, guys.

 

[essenbe]

 

[Wordsworth]

Actually, leprechauns tend to be quite troublesome. They are the Irish cousins to gremlins, poltergeists, and minnahoonies.

I started pulling cables and finally got the board to start up on top of my washing machine (no monitor or keyboard/mouse) when I pulled the front panel connectors in the lower right corner. I'll figure which one was the culprit later.

Thanks for the encouragement, guys.

I think I've got poltergeists in my box since installing IE10; may need to perform an exorcism (restore) to put this box back right.

Glad you got it running LF. I've read of others that had front panel connectors causing shorts to occur. All in good fun I say.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Some fun (mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble).

I finally found the problem. When I plugged in the reset switch connector and turned the machine on, the leprechuns were back. I'm thinking, "Oh no (censored version), replacing that switch is going to be a bugger." Then, on an inexplicable impulse, I tried reversing the connector, then turning the machine back on. That fixed it. Go figure; I though there was no polarity on those switches. The connector certainly isn't marked polarized.

But then I noticed the fans on the GPU weren't spinning and the case speaker was was giving me a long beep followed by three short beeps, then after a long pause, a long beep followed by four short beeps, a short pause, then another short beep. According to the manual, the first beeps indicate no VGA. I'm thinking, "OK, the monitor isn't hooked up." The manual says that a long beep followed by four short beeps indicates a hardware failure (what was with the additional short beep?) so now I'm thinking, "Great! I killed the GPU card!" Before planning the funeral, I took a closer look and discovered the PCIe power cable was still disconnected. I had left it floating in the air by the socket and, from the angle I had been looking, it had looked like it was plugged in. I plugged it in, fired up the machine, and eventually got the single beep I was supposed to get. Whooo hooo! (Doing happy dance )

The next step is to wrestle the boat anchor (from the QE2, no less) back to my desk (actually, a night stand by the daek where my old desktop resided) so I can hook up the monitor and keyboard/mouse (the keyboard is hardwired to the USB and has a port I can plug in the receiver for my wireless mouse). I'm definitely going to wait until tomorrow to do that. It's late, I'm tired, and my arms and back are still less than happy with me. At least I'll sleep a whole sight better knowing the episode of the errent screw and bass-ackwards connector is finally over.

 

[paulpicks21]

You're doing a cracking job there Lady Fitzgeald
I bet that screw drove you nuts enit lol. They get in alsorts of place's don't they.

I finaly got some pennies together and bought a proper desk and chair instead of my coffee table and gaming chair. It's so nice to have loads of room but i'm struggling to get used to gaming sat up

Looks great Ryan. You will get used to it mate.

 

[ganjiry]

Cheers chap, Lets hope so aye

 

[Wordsworth]

I'm definitely going to wait until tomorrow to do that. It's late, I'm tired, and my arms and back are still less than happy with me. At least I'll sleep a whole sight better knowing the episode of the errent screw and bass-ackwards connector is finally over.

Glad you solved the one thing that might have kept you up. I've had nights where I'd go to bed with something not working right and not sleep anyway for thinking about the solution. These days I only work when I'm fresh then call it a night otherwise fatigue from life, work, and other stresses sets in and will cause mistakes.

Building can be fun but frustrating as well at times.

 

[Alsisgevat]

Welcome back Joey
back due to injury on ya bike

Lol, your joking but 2 weeks ago I tore my muscles in my right arm and wrist, had to wear this dumb looking wrist gaurd thing till 2 days ago, but I'm better and gonna drive tommorow again . As for my pc its back,liquid swapped, and ready to game. Gonna give it some proper TLC hehe. Glad to be back. Also grats on the new desk and chair!

WB Joey, where ya been?

A Guy

Hi mate, and thank you. Iv'e had some admition exams going and the bike riding kept me bussy, but Im slowly getting back in the forums, I missed everyone too much haha, so you be seeing allot more of me now hehe

Edit: Lady Fitzgerald: You have an awesome rig going on, looks very very good. As I go back around via all the pages I missed it seems you put allot of personal care and work into it. It payed off, nice job!

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I didn't get the machine moved to the nightstand by my desk until this evening because we had some serious winds and thunderstorms, including pea sized hail, that were actually shaking my mobile home. I kept the power plugs on it and my notebook pulled in case of a lightning strike (it was hitting all around us).

It's been running for about three hours now. I've just been exploring the UEFI BIOS a bit and watching the CPU temps. I've done very little in a BIOS in the past and UEFI is totally brand new to me. The CPU has been staying at 42-44°C; ambient has been fluctuating between 23° and 24°C. Keep in mind the case is open on both sides and there is no OS installed yet. I would prefer seeing 5-10°C less but, since the CPU fan is loafing at 655-665 rpm, it may not rise all that much when I start putting the CPU to work. I also set the RAM to run at 1600 and it's running 9-9-9-24. It also sees my SSD, the only drive that's hooked up.

Since you all are hungry for pictures, here is one of the bad boy UPS I have the machine plugged into:

The power wiring in the mobile home court I live in is less than stellar, mostly due to the incompetent electricians our slumlord used to have under contract. Fortunately, the current manager convinced him to replace the idiots (I've got a few horror tales about them) with some that are much better. We had some outages last summer (several hours worth every two days for a couple of weeks) that the new guys eventually tracked down to an improper underground splice done by the idiots sometime in the past (intermittant failures can be a bugger to find). We had another one a couple, three months ago when the overhead feeding the 12KV into the park's underground blew up (literally) and the power company had to cut gaps and string a new conductor. So I decided to get a UPS. It's bigger than I need but I should be future-proofed. It has the capability to safely shut down the computer before the power runs out.

 

[Britton30]

It's always good to have more than needed in the power area.

I live in a mobile home park too which is served by 2 power companies. Our section will go out with minor lighning while the rest of the park stays on.

 

[ZaLiTH]

That's one scary looking UPS there Britton30, 8 outputs? I'd love one, we lose power very often where I stay... I've got a tiny UPS, literally gives me enough time to save my work and shut down before it dies.

Anyway, I've been keeping up to date with the thread, but now I finally have something to post.. I can't quite afford to get my dream system just yet, but I did just finalise a deal to get a bit of an upgrade.

So, sometime during the coming week I should be running a Phenom II x4 975BE on a MSI 990FXA-GD65 board with a Patriot G2 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 ram kit.

Should be a nice improvement over my current rig hey, on the CPU power side alone I'll be going from a gross of 7.8GHz (3-core 2.6GHz) to 14.4GHz (4-core 3.6GHz). Hehe... Can't wait.

 

[essenbe]

Lady Fitzgerald, Nice UPS. Leaves you plenty of head room to expand. That means your building is not over. That's good news. Congrats on the new build. Well done. But, if you're like me, you're happy about the new build, but sad that it's over. If you have the habit as bad as I do, there's nothing better than having the build done and hearing that first POST beep. But, when I hear that beep is when I start thinking about the next build. It's addictive. You did a great job and deserve congratulations.

@Zalith. Sounds like a very nice upgrade for you. Good job. I know you will be happy with the improved performance. Sounds like it will be a killer rig, but we demand a lot of pictures. You have to remember, a lot of us have the addiction real bad. So, when we aren't building, looking at pictures of others builds helps
reduce the anxiety, just a little bit.. We love pictures. Can't wait to see more of Lady Fitzgreald's build and yours to hold off the beast a little. It sounds like you are going to have a pretty strong build. Well done.

Both of you need to get busy and change your system specs to the new and improved ones.

 

[ZaLiTH]

@Zalith. Sounds like a very nice upgrade for you. Good job. I know you will be happy with the improved performance. Sounds like it will be a killer rig, but we demand a lot of pictures. You have to remember, a lot of us have the addiction real bad. So, when we aren't building, looking at pictures of others builds helps
reduce the anxiety, just a little bit.. We love pictures. Can't wait to see more of Lady Fitzgreald's build and yours to hold off the beast a little. It sounds like you are going to have a pretty strong build. Well done.

Well, I've wanted a MSI board for ages, partly because I love their layout... But this GD65 scored 83% in a Bit-Tech review, not half bad for what they call a "budget board". I'll post pictures of the build as I put it together, hopefully second half of next week.

I may end up re-thinking my colour scheme at some point. Green LED fans and a black case fits my current XFX board beautifully, but the MSI is blue and black... Might need new fans... And a new CPU cooler (CNPS9900DF looks nice)...

Hmmm...... So many choices.