MSI X79MA-GD45 dead?

Hey folks, received this board yesterday, managed to hoop up to a seasonic x-660 PSU, and a 3930k CPU, with old 8800GTS card lying around. Well I installed windows, everything was fine, rebooted a few time after driver installations, and the board didn't want to POST at all. What happened was - my card and fans went to full speed - black screen on the monitor - board turned off - and then it started to loop like that. I guess it's dead since i used different PSU - with same results. Tried removing memory sticks - same, no memory sticks - 3 beeps - same looping shutdowns. Removed the CPU and launched the board - no shutdowns but nothing on the screen. Anyway i'm going to apply for RMA tomorrow and get a new one, unless i'm doing something wrong? Thanks

 

I had a very similar issue and it was memory related. Do you have any other ram you could test it with - start by testing with just one stick

 

Yeah i did, actually one stick in every single memory bank, same things going to try something today

update:

Tested every memory module in the first memory bank, same shutdown after 25 secs - turns on - 25 secs - shutdown and loops like that. Without ANY memory it beeps 3 long beeps - shuts down - and does pretty much the same. Unless it's suppose to shut down with no memory? Weird thing is - that it worked fine first - detected all 16 gb of memory too. No warning led is being lit near any memory bank too.

 

The best advice I have is to stay as far away from MSI motherboards as possible.

But since you have one already, have you tried putting it back together and clearing the CMOS?

If it has a reset button or not go ahead and pull battery for 10 seconds, reinstall and see what it does.

If it still fails then replace with another brand of board or if that's not possible RMA and hope for the best. Took me 3 tries to get a working mobo from MSI so GL with that.

 

yeah tried all of that, going to send it back, i never expected it to fail, since it worked JUST fine at first. Besides all the positive reviews on MSI boards lately made me consider it...

 

But is this the same ram or are you testing it with different ram? When I had the problem it didn't go away until I tried different ram

 

Yeah it's the same RAM, i don't have any other, but i tested every single module out of 4 alone. What are the chances all of them are bad? Also there's LED near the ram modules on the motherboard which light up if the memory is incompatible. Besides without any RAM at all i get the same shutdown loops, just with 3 beeping sounds before.

 

The ram might not actually be bad, it could just be a compatibility issue. I had the same problem - I had four 8GB sticks and the problem continued with any single stick or all of them. I swapped them with a different type of ram and the problem went away right away and my system has been stable since.

What type of ram are you using?

 

Here is the thread I started when I had the problem:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=355768

 

^^ This, Get some diff ram and it would probably work fine

 

Yeah i tried with my friends Patriot RAM, same damn thing happens... For Gods sake..

 

Huh, very odd indeed.

I assume you have tried resetting the BIOS?

If i was you, id be taking it all apart and checking everything.

I had a PC a few years back that would not turn on at all after i had cleaned it of dust.

I was checking cables and connections and pulled out the IDE cable and all of a sudden it booted up and worked fine.

I was like, WTF? :3eyes:

So check eeeevvveeerrryyything

 

i've resetted the bios about a 100 times by now lol, some tech MSI guy gave me some restore procedure - to remove power - battery - ram - start the machine 1 time with no ram installed - force turn off - start again with just a single ram in "BLUE" bank (funny cause all banks are black i just assumed the first bank) and it should work. Well it doesn't so bleh. I'm going to disconnect everything and plug it back in again.. But considering the PSU isn't the issue because i tried with another one too, so i assume it's hopeless now lol

 

RMA it is then it seems. Sucks that it would just die like that for no reason

 

Seriously, it was working just fine until that damn reset, then all hell broke loose. I guess it's just bad luck, since i have an old Gigabyte board on another machine and I can do whatever the hell i want with it and it's still rock solid. Oh well ...

 

The motherboard could be improperly detecting the ram profiles, using the ram with wrong settings.

-scheherazade

 

BTW, can you access the bios at all? When I had this problem I couldn't even access the Bios.

 

Well it could be detecting the memory wrong yeah. But how come it worked before o.o
And nope, I cannot enter the BIOS since i don't see anything on the screen, and i actually timed the time after i fire up the machine till it shuts down - 25 seconds, and again. I think i'll make a video or something lol

 

It sounds like you have the exact same problem I had. You are using Kingston Hyper-X 1600 ram correct? Is the patriot also 1600 or 1333?

I switched from 1600 to 1333, also before you test it with new ram you need to reset the bios by pulling the battery out forr awhile as detailed in an earlier post.

 

Yep that's the RAM i have, the one with grey heatsinks, i'll just pull the battery out for the night and try in the morning with the different set. The Kingston is 1600, the patriot is 1333