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Question

New Computer Build Won't Boot

Mar 15, 2016 11:04AM PDT

Everything worked fine for about 4 weeks, lots of gaming, stable and low temps under load (low to mid 50s during heavy gaming). No overclocking (yet). Over the past week there were 1 or 2 times I thought I turned if off at night was running the next day Today I tried booting and got the bios splash screen but no boot into windows. I restarted, keyed into bios, changed an option, hit “save and restart” and it froze. I restarted and for the next Several boots I had blinking underscore cursor in upper left corner but no boot. Reset cmos chip, tried using 1 stick of ram in all of the slots, unplugged usb cables, get different results each time I power on. No longer get splash screen (except briefly for one boot after moving ram but couldn’t reproduce it). Getting different results each time. Seem to have lost all video out. Monitor never seems to come out of sleep mode. Now, I get the following results:

Stick on a temperature on the debug display (i.e. 35, 69, 10)

Code 00

Several times it would turn on for a few seconds, turn off, and then turn on again

Motherboard splash screen, then blank, error code 9C, then turns off


I don’t know if it sounds more like a motherboard or PSU problem or something else.

I’ll check the processor pins when I can get some thermal paste in the mail in a couple of days.

Any ideas of what is going on? Does it sound like a power supply issue or the motherboard? Can I rule out the processor since it worked fine for a month? Next steps?

I’d love to figure out which part is causing me the trouble so I can return/RMA new one.

Thanks!

MSI-Z97 Gaming 5
Intel Core i7-4790K w/ Corsair h100i GTX liquid cooler
MSI GTX 980 Ti
2 X 8 Gig Corsair Vengence Pro series
Corsair RM 850W 80+ Gold CPU
Boot disc- Samsung 850 Evo-Series 500 GB SSD
2 X Seagate HDD 4TB (in Raid 1)
Win 10, 64 bit

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I see prior posts on that error.
Mar 15, 2016 11:10AM PDT

Looks like a motherboard issue. "what im saying is, more specifically; MSI USB initialization causes many issues for vast majority of MSI users on boot"

From priors at https://www.google.com/search?q=error+code+9C

You also have Seagates and then opted for RAID 1 which I've found to be problematic as the usual RAID 1 is unrecoverable if the boot drive fails. Be sure of your choices here. Some folk don't discover this until it fails.

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Thanks!
Mar 15, 2016 12:02PM PDT

Thanks for the quick reply. I only got the 9C error message once. Does the rest of the information still lead you to think it could be a motherboard issue? What steps would your recommend to narrow it down before the RMA process?

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I only know what you tell.
Mar 16, 2016 1:10PM PDT

I do know I've had too many long RAID 1 discussions. While I do try to recover, my view is that's is a bad idea if it's a software RAID. Too many losses and yes, I try to recover but know at best we save the files and start over on the OS install, etc.

As to narrowing it down, the fact you have an unknown RAID 1 plus Seagates is rather alarming. It would be better to have them in non-RAID 1 and just sync them when you feel like it. No more events that corrupt both drives in real time.

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Good to know
Mar 16, 2016 10:43PM PDT

The RAID only has data no apps or operating system so I doubt that's the problem. However I'll look at changing it once I get the Computer up and running. Is it easy to reverse? I set up through windows 10 so is that a sofyware RAID?

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Answer
check motherboard
Mar 16, 2016 8:54AM PDT

I was fixing a self build computer recently with similar problems to what you describe. The user had not put the motherboard on the offset pins. Instead the motherboard was screwed directly onto the side panel of the case. The result of this was the metal case was shorting the motherboard out and nothing would work properly!

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Will double check
Mar 16, 2016 11:06PM PDT

I'm pretty sure I put standoffs in all spots but Ill do a double check when I do the bench test before RMAing thenboard. If it was a short I feel like I would have had some kind of problem before. I had 4 weeks of it running perfectly so I'm guessing something had failed. I appreciate the suggestion though. I'll def check that.