I think my mobo is dead.

[WhiteNoise]

I have an MSI MEG z490 ACE mobo. Last night while gaming the pc screen went black and though the pc was still running, nothing responded so I did a hard shut down. Once I did that, nothing came back on. I could see the little power button on the mobo was lit up but nothing would come on at all.

I tested the Psu with a paper clip and it turns on, and then I used my multimeter to tests every pin and all volts look great. I also noticed when I use a paperclip to turn on the Psu, that my two hard drives fire up and the front led strip in my case lights up, but nothing else. Fans don’t spin etc.

Cleared CMOS, you know the usual stuff. Only thing now is to either swap out the Psu even though it seems fine, or swap out the mobo.

when stuff like this happens I just feel like building a whole new pc. This one is from Q3 2020. Might be time for a DDR5 rig.
Anyways, it sounds like the mobo died doesn’t it? If the PSU rails are fine then the only thing left is the mobo. Nothing looks burnt or blown tho. So strange.

 

[JATownes]

If the PSU is testing good, it very well could be. I had a Asus z370 w/ an 8086k do the same thing. Processor was fine, but board was dead. I'd find a cheap board replacement on ebay rather than rebuild, unless you just have that DDR5 itch.

I'd pull the battery for a couple hours, then try to boot with the bare essentials out of the case first to be sure.

 

[Deleted member 185158]

I think DdR5 rig if you have to spend the money. My 12400F spanks my old 8700K quite throughly at any given equivalent frequency for example.

 

[WhiteNoise]

So I ended up just buying a new MSI Z590 Tomahawk mobo and installed it, only to discover that of the three slots for M.2, slot one does not work with a 10th gen CPU and only an 11gen so I said F it and bought an i7 11700k. I really wanted to use that #1 slot for my M.2 drive.

After installing the new CPU I had nothing but trouble getting the board to post. In an act of desperation, I removed the 11700k and tossed my 10850K back in and the PC booted right up. Before I return the new CPU, I will update the BIOS and swap CPUs again. Maybe that will solve my problem. I really hate to give up that m.2 slot. I like to run at least three M.2 cards.

I then accidentally wiped all of my drives during the windows 10 install, the first time I ever did that, so now I'm 9 hours into an 18 hour deep scan to retrieve all of my lost files. /sigh. It's been a punch-in-the-gut weekend.

Oh and to top it off, my Crucial P3 2 TB M.2 (a few weeks new) slotted in the M.2 slot #3, is no longer detected, within the BIOS or windows. I want to pull it and pop in another one just to make sure if it is the card or slot that is janked, but I have to wait for this deep scan to get done.

...I should have just built a new PC but after pricing out what I want, I was looking at around $1200 for the board, CPU, and memory. I figured $500 was the better option but I'm having regrets now.


lol, what a weekend.

 

[ir_cow]

So I ended up just buying a new MSI Z590 Tomahawk mobo and installed it, only to discover that of the three slots for M.2, slot one does not work with a 10th gen CPU and only an 11gen so I said F it and bought an i7 11700k. I really wanted to use that #1 slot for my M.2 drive.

At first I thought something is wrong with that MB. Your talking about the M.2 Socket, not the PCIe Slot. You have to read the manual, sometimes you lose SATA ports, PCIe slots, or M.2 sockets depending on the configuration.

MAG Z590 TOMAHAWK WIFI

Powered by Intel 11th Gen Core processors, the MSI MAG Z590 TOMAHAWK WIFI is hardened with performance essential specifications to outlast enemies. Tuned for better performance by Core boost, DDR4 Boost, Premium Thermal Solution, M.2 Shield Frozr, USB 3.2

www.msi.com

• 6x SATA 6Gb/s ports (From Z590 chipset) 1
• 3x M.2 slots (Key M)
  • M2_1 slot (From CPU)
    • Available only on 11th Gen Intel® CPU
    • Supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4
    • Supports 2242/ 2260/ 2280/ 22110 storage devices
  • M2_21 & M2_3 2slot (From Z590 chipset)
    • Supports up to PCIe 3.0 x4
    • Supports SATA up to 6Gb/s
    • Supports 2242/ 2260/ 2280 storage devices
    • Intel® Optane™ Memory Ready 3
  • Supports Intel® Smart Response Technology for Intel Core™ processors

1. SATA2 will be unavailable when installing M.2 SATA SSD in the M2_2 slot.
2. SATA5 & SATA6 will be unavailable when installing M.2 SSD in the M2_3 slot.
3. Before using Intel® Optane™ memory modules, please ensure that you have updated the drivers and BIOS to the latest version from MSI website.

 

[Space Lynx]

So I ended up just buying a new MSI Z590 Tomahawk mobo and installed it, only to discover that of the three slots for M.2, slot one does not work with a 10th gen CPU and only an 11gen so I said F it and bought an i7 11700k. I really wanted to use that #1 slot for my M.2 drive.

After installing the new CPU I had nothing but trouble getting the board to post. In an act of desperation, I removed the 11700k and tossed my 10850K back in and the PC booted right up. Before I return the new CPU, I will update the BIOS and swap CPUs again. Maybe that will solve my problem. I really hate to give up that m.2 slot. I like to run at least three M.2 cards.

I then accidentally wiped all of my drives during the windows 10 install, the first time I ever did that, so now I'm 9 hours into an 18 hour deep scan to retrieve all of my lost files. /sigh. It's been a punch-in-the-gut weekend.

Oh and to top it off, my Crucial P3 2 TB M.2 (a few weeks new) slotted in the M.2 slot #3, is no longer detected, within the BIOS or windows. I want to pull it and pop in another one just to make sure if it is the card or slot that is janked, but I have to wait for this deep scan to get done.

...I should have just built a new PC but after pricing out what I want, I was looking at around $1200 for the board, CPU, and memory. I figured $500 was the better option but I'm having regrets now.


lol, what a weekend.

you should have a 14 day refund period at least?

refund and start over?

checkout my system specs. i got a badass mobo for only 173 over at best buy. and im just going to pop in a 13600kf for 309. the ram is qvl i bought for it, and confirmed by ircow the ram reviewer here on th eforums to be dual ranked. im set. didnt cost me much and it will trade blows with the big boys.

 

[kozad]

Ouch on the file erase - once you get the data recovered (fingers crossed) def look into some cloud backup. I pay for the 100GB OneDrive + got 25GB from various bonuses over the years. It's just barely enough, but I got all my essential files backed up so if my PC is carried off in a tornado or my apartment burns down, I still got a copy of my non-replaceable files (including my mostly pointless mp3 collection, haha).

 

[mclaren85]

Do motherboards fail so often? And Meg class is the best series of MSI.
Please recheck every sockets including the CPU

 

[Bomby569]

Do motherboards fail so often? And Meg class is the best series of MSI.

they do

 

[ir_cow]

they do

each to their own. I've had one fail from every brand over the last 20 years. I couldn't say one fails more often, but I don't have a repair shop either.

 

[WhiteNoise]

you should have a 14 day refund period at least?

refund and start over?

checkout my system specs. i got a badass mobo for only 173 over at best buy. and im just going to pop in a 13600kf for 309. the ram is qvl i bought for it, and confirmed by ircow the ram reviewer here on th eforums to be dual ranked. im set. didnt cost me much and it will trade blows with the big boys.

Yeah, I do have that option. I'm going to try the CPU once more after a BIOS update and if I run into issues, then I will return the CPU and maybe even the mobo and just go with a new system. If on the other hand, the CPU works fine after the BIOS update, I'll be happy to keep the kit.

My recovery software has about 2 hours to go.


As for motherboards failing, this is only my second one that failed in over 20 years.

I believe I know why it failed too, but I have no proof.

 

[Space Lynx]

Yeah, I do have that option. I'm going to try the CPU once more after a BIOS update and if I run into issues, then I will return the CPU and maybe even the mobo and just go with a new system. If on the other hand, the CPU works fine after the BIOS update, I'll be happy to keep the kit.

My recovery software has about 2 hours to go.


As for motherboards failing, this is only my second one that failed in over 20 years.

I believe I know why it failed too, but I have no proof.

raptor lake is a monster, and best buy still has my mobo in stock at clearance price, i think you should go raptor lake personally

 

[Eskimonster]

I must be lucky, my z77 has been running 10 years. 40k+ hours or so. To be on topic sorta, what do you guys use if you need to find files on a wiped disk ?

 

[WhiteNoise]

I must be lucky, my z77 has been running 10 years. 40k+ hours or so. To be on topic sorta, what do you guys use if you need to find files on a wiped disk ?

I'm still running an MSI P67A-GD65 mobo since 2011, so 11 years now. It's paired with an i5 2500K and both have been running almost daily for the entire time. It is currently used for my daughter's game rig. It has 16Gb of ram and a GTX980. Still runs like a champ. (she only plays Minecraft, Roblox, and Genshin.)

Bad pic but there she is:

 

[DAPUNISHER]

As for motherboards failing, this is only my second one that failed in over 20 years.

I believe I know why it failed too, but I have no proof.

This thread is a Halloween horror thriller. Sorry that happened to you.

You have my rapt attention, what do you think the point of failure was?

As to mainboards going belly up. Back in the bad caps era I lost 2 MSI, 1 EPoX, and 1 ECS all within a few months. It's been smooth sailing ever since. I don't do much extended all core workloads though. 95% gaming focused.

 

[WhiteNoise]

Turns out the new i7 11700K is good to go. The mobo just needed a BIOS update. Reinstalled this CPU earlier today and I have had zero issues.

Benching it, it outperforms my i9 in single-core performance but not multicore. Still, I can now use the #1 slot M.2 so I'm happy.

 

[Mussels]

So I ended up just buying a new MSI Z590 Tomahawk mobo and installed it, only to discover that of the three slots for M.2, slot one does not work with a 10th gen CPU and only an 11gen so I said F it and bought an i7 11700k. I really wanted to use that #1 slot for my M.2 drive.

After installing the new CPU I had nothing but trouble getting the board to post. In an act of desperation, I removed the 11700k and tossed my 10850K back in and the PC booted right up. Before I return the new CPU, I will update the BIOS and swap CPUs again. Maybe that will solve my problem. I really hate to give up that m.2 slot. I like to run at least three M.2 cards.

I then accidentally wiped all of my drives during the windows 10 install, the first time I ever did that, so now I'm 9 hours into an 18 hour deep scan to retrieve all of my lost files. /sigh. It's been a punch-in-the-gut weekend.

Oh and to top it off, my Crucial P3 2 TB M.2 (a few weeks new) slotted in the M.2 slot #3, is no longer detected, within the BIOS or windows. I want to pull it and pop in another one just to make sure if it is the card or slot that is janked, but I have to wait for this deep scan to get done.

...I should have just built a new PC but after pricing out what I want, I was looking at around $1200 for the board, CPU, and memory. I figured $500 was the better option but I'm having regrets now.


lol, what a weekend.

Always disconnect every drive except the OS drive when installing an OS
Windows puts the bootloader on drive 0, and that's rarely the one you want (for most systems thats SATA1, so if you're using NVME your bootloader can end up on a mech drive or storage drive)


definitely try cleaning the pads on the CPU, it's very easy for a fingerprint or thermal paste to weaken contact and slowly shift or spread over time



As for the missing NVME drive, these boards shuffle PCI-E lanes around madly. A 1x device in the wrong slot might disable an NVME drive, or any device in a combination of slots might drop the GPU to 8x to activate those slots

You'd need to install just the NVME drives and GPU and remove SATA drives and PCI-E cards and test that way, then add devices back in to see what disables when (reading the manual helps, but they're often confusing as shit and some CPUs have more lanes than others, so they give duplicate answers with slight differences between spec pages and the manuals)

 

[Space Lynx]

Always disconnect every drive except the OS drive when installing an OS
Windows puts the bootloader on drive 0, and that's rarely the one you want (for most systems thats SATA1, so if you're using NVME your bootloader can end up on a mech drive or storage drive)


definitely try cleaning the pads on the CPU, it's very easy for a fingerprint or thermal paste to weaken contact and slowly shift or spread over time



As for the missing NVME drive, these boards shuffle PCI-E lanes around madly. A 1x device in the wrong slot might disable an NVME drive, or any device in a combination of slots might drop the GPU to 8x to activate those slots

You'd need to install just the NVME drives and GPU and remove SATA drives and PCI-E cards and test that way, then add devices back in to see what disables when (reading the manual helps, but they're often confusing as shit and some CPUs have more lanes than others, so they give duplicate answers with slight differences between spec pages and the manuals)

yeah I do this every time I use Linux or Windows. I go a step further, I just do a full shut down, then swap the nvme drive with the OS I want to use for that day, and the other OS drive isn't even connected to the system. its like giving myself two complete systems without any risk of corruption.

A bit annoying I have to admit, but I had Linux corrupt a dual boot once. and it pissed me off.

 

[thesmokingman]

My kid's x570 Strix-E board was acting up recently. I had a hell of a time diagnosing it. It would act like a psu or gpu fail, reboot on load. However neither psu/gpu were bad after testing. Then it started acting more flaky, unstable in dual channel or all dimms filled. Luckily have other systems to swap the cpu/ram into which was good in alt system leaving the board as the culprit. That was confirmed after a replacement board.

 

[Space Lynx]

My kid's x570 Strix-E board was acting up recently. I had a hell of a time diagnosing it. It would act like a psu or gpu fail, reboot on load. However neither psu/gpu were bad after testing. Then it started acting more flaky, unstable in dual channel or all dimms filled. Luckily have other systems to swap the cpu/ram into which was good in alt system leaving the board as the culprit. That was confirmed after a replacement board.

Did you try changing the CR2032 battery in the bad motherboard? Might have fixed everything too. Many forget about that little battery.

 

[thesmokingman]

Did you try changing the CR2032 battery in the bad motherboard? Might have fixed everything too. Many forget about that little battery.

No that wasn't it. Did you miss the part about the board being bad. You think replacing the coin battery would fix the boards degradation of the memory slots?

 

[Space Lynx]

No that wasn't it. Did you miss the part about the board being bad. You think replacing the coin battery would fix the boards degradation of the memory slots?

it might. bios stuff can be very weird and finnicky in my experience, i guess technically it can run without a battery in though, so you are probably right. i just prefer to eliminate all variables first.

 

[thesmokingman]

it might. bios stuff can be very weird and finnicky in my experience, i guess technically it can run without a battery in though, so you are probably right. i just prefer to eliminate all variables first.

Are you daft? The old board is gone, what fkn use is there to testing the battery? Why even suggest that now? Who the heck do you think confirmed bad board in rma process????

 

[Space Lynx]

Are you daft? The old board is gone, what fkn use is there to testing the battery? Why even suggest that now? Who the heck do you think confirmed bad board in rma process????

all humans are fallible, so who knows, just saying all variables should be tried

 

[Mussels]

My kid's x570 Strix-E board was acting up recently. I had a hell of a time diagnosing it. It would act like a psu or gpu fail, reboot on load. However neither psu/gpu were bad after testing. Then it started acting more flaky, unstable in dual channel or all dimms filled. Luckily have other systems to swap the cpu/ram into which was good in alt system leaving the board as the culprit. That was confirmed after a replacement board.

chipset heatsink has a thermal pad that wears out after 2-3 years of use, replace that with a new better quality pad and you'll be good to go
I spent a few months fighting that same issue myself on my -f

I even fixed an old sandy bridge system that was having random HDD and SSD corruption by replacing its southbridge TIM with a new pad too, people always forget mobo components need cooling too - and often have shitty, or no, thermal sensors

Are you daft? The old board is gone, what fkn use is there to testing the battery? Why even suggest that now? Who the heck do you think confirmed bad board in rma process????

chill.

Nothing says the advice here isn't gunna be useful next time for the OP.