System building trouble

[Eric Oyen]

Troubleshooting 101, if the board supports upgrading the firmware without the CPU or other additional hardware installed and it won’t come up, it’s likely either the firmware needs to be reset, or the board, itself, is bad. Both are highly likely at this stage.

If resetting the firmware doesn’t resolve the issue, that leaves it as a bad motherboard. If you have some kind of warrantee on it, return it for an exchange, refund or an upgrade.

It’s funny when you think about it though. All of this technology that we take for granted and all of it is exceedingly fragile. One little ESD in the wrong spot, a drop off the desk or even sitting on it wrong and your tech becomes a glorified paperweight. In my case, that can be problematic as some of my tech deals specifically with blindness issues.

Anyway, best way to tell if the motherboard is toast, take a look at any of the tin can caps on there. If the top is bulged or looks like it has a pin hole, it’s a bad cap and that can kill a motherboard faster than a laser punching a hole through a sheet of paper.

-Eric
From the central offices of the Technomage Guild, Warrantee recommendations dept.


> On Aug 1, 2019, at 3:03 PM, Adam Mercer <ramercer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2019 at 8:48 PM Harold Hartley <wheelie207 at ownmail.net> wrote:
>> 
>> I’m starting to think that you may have a bad motherboard.
> 
> I'm starting to think the same. The board supports flashing a new bios
> without the CPU, any memory, or a GPU connected so I followed the
> instructions for doing this and nothing happens.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Adam
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