Computer help? Doesn't seem to fit in BuildAPC

Hardware Other Hardware
1

Hello,

As a poor-ish gamer, I'm at my wit's-end here....

I wanted to try those neat all-in-one liquid cooling setups for my CPU. So I did. Take off both sides of the case take off stock fan (hey I wasn't overclocking, stock is fine for that....somewhat, sheesh), unplug it. 

Set up the pain in the butt (but less pain in the butt then a full liquid cooling setup) kit, and all seems great. Exeeeeeept for the part where my monitor says no signal. Alright, weird. 

So I take out one GPU, (running SLI) try again. Nada, try just the other gpu, nope, try both in sli, again, nope. 

Time to retrace my steps. So I go back to the stock fan, now a lot more room to see in my case. All looks normal, all looks fine, yet, still that "no signal". I also have two monitors, and I've tried all the combos. SLI with each monitor, both monitors, and did that for each GPU separately...nothing has work, my monitor still reads no signal and at this point I have no idea what to do....

My only GUESS, and it's a guess mind with, is to get a new motherboard....What could  have gone wrong? Nothing changes, the only plugging in or out was my CPU fan, and then the liquid cooling unit to a USB power area on the MB and into the PSU via sata power.....but that shouldn't change it being able to boot. I highly doubt BOTH GPUs quit on me, or that both monitors quit on me. So that leaves...the motherboard? CPU and RAM wouldn't make sense, and I have 2 sticks of 4gb of RAM with 4 slots. So I tried the other set of slots, then one stick at a time, as you can guess, nothing. CPU has been stuck in there, nothing has changed besides thermal paste on the top which didn't leak or get anywhere it shouldn't have....that leaves me to thing, against all odds and for absolutely no reason, my motherboard just decided to quit on me.

 

Any suggestions? Something I may have missed?

 

Basically it's turns on, and no signal. Once after I unplug and mess and switch things around it will boot, turn off, boot, turn off, boot, turn off, then finally boot once more and then it will just stay on doing nothing, monitor saying no signal if I turn it on, or if I turn it on with the monitor on, the monitor will stay in standby mode. 

 

Any ideas? Because 8 hours later...I'm out of them.

2

unplug the pwr for the watercooling  system as a short may be occuring

3

It's back on the stock fan now, how I had it before I installed anything, still no luck.

4

Did you unplug 12v (4 or 8pin) in the upper left near IO ports during your change of cooler?

CPU power plug not being plugged in causes: mobo and all components to get power, but no CPU power = no POST. Common enough mistake. Check it,

5

Yeah I did check that :(

I just went and got a new MOBO. Everything is fine. I guess it really did die, just couldn't believe it...

Everything seems to be working perfectly fine with the new MOBO. 

On that note, is MSI a brand I should stay away from and is ASUS a good one? I just got an ASUS board, the guy there recommended it although because I have Sandy Bride and an 1155 Socket the one he liked wouldn't work as it was for Haswell, but this board seems decent enough for their lower end.

The MSI board I just replaced was actually DOA when I first got it. Few days of headache before I finally swapped it out because it was an all new build so I was trying to make sure other parts weren't at fault. I returned it, then got the MOBO that just died on me about 4 years later. I've never had a MOBO die on me before it was time to replace it before, and when I mentioned MSI the guy at the store was acting like that was a bad choice and he was happy to lead me to ASUS. 

When I save up I plan to do a new Haswell build and should I look towards ASUS as a good brand next time?

 

Thank you guys for the tips. I know my way around a PC a fair bit, at least enough to know it was the MOBO that died but I really refused to believe it as it seemed so untimely and random and I was very careful when doing the liquid cooling setup. Ah well. Such is life sometimes.