PC sometimes does not boot

Solved/Closed
verun Posts 3 Registration date Thursday October 30, 2014 Status Member Last seen November 1, 2014 - Oct 30, 2014 at 04:47 AM
verun Posts 3 Registration date Thursday October 30, 2014 Status Member Last seen November 1, 2014 - Nov 1, 2014 at 08:10 AM
Hello,

I got a really strange problem with my PC. The "sometimes"-problems might be the hardest to solve, but maybe someone has more insight than me here.
To better be able to understand the possible problems, I'll list the parts as accurate as possible:

PSU: Corsair AX1200W
MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme
RAM: 32 GB G.Skill Ares DDR3-2133
CPU: Intel Core I7 4770K
Graphics: EVGA GTX 680 Hydro Copper Classified @stock
Cooling: Mora 2 Pro with 9 attached fans all connected to the PSU, 2 chassis fans, Leing water pump
Hard Discs: 2 SSDs, 5 SATA 2s
Keyboard: Logitech G19 (own power supply)
Mouse: Logitech G700
Monitors: Asus PG278Q ROG + 2 Dell U2711 + 1 LG 60" TV (all own power supply)
1 DVD writer: LG GH22LS50
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion (lol)
OS is Windows 7 x64 Ultimate
Several temp displays at the front of the chassis.


Usually my PC boots up fine but sometimes (about every 5-10 days) it won't.
I press power, PC makes noises as if everything is booting up fine, screens stay black however and also the Chassis Fan 1. A few times though some fans on the Mora 2 also stayed still. One time the CPU temperature reported 0°C, so I presume the CPU did not turn on that one time? At all the other tries, the CPU had a reported temp.
When I hold power a few secs to turn it off and then press power again, to try it again, sometimes it works after a few tries!
Usually I try to change something after the fourth failed attempt though, so I cannot say what causes this.

Things I tried until now:
I reset the CMOS (until I did this, my BIOS clock was frozen too. Resetting the CMOS fixed this and the PC started correctly after this too - it could be a coincidence though.

Another time (this morning) I switched to my second BIOS on board. I immediately got a screen where I saw the BIOS was loading an update (probably from BIOS 1). It then restarted and I needed three more tries on BIOS 2 to get the PC to boot.

I switched the fan from the chassis slot 1 to the CPU fan 1 slot on the motherboard.

I removed the overclocking of the CPU (was at 4300 before (turbo off), now at 3500 (3900 turbo)).

The problem persists.
The weird thing is: apart from this, the system is 100% stable even when I let the PC on for more than a day. There are no crashes, no performance issues, no screen-issues at all. All temps are at around 24-34°C, even CPU, RAM and GPU.
There are several layers of over voltage protection on my house power supply, the PSU and the motherboard itself.



EDIT:
I forgot to mention since when these problems occur:
When I got a Saitek X52 Pro I had problems for 2 days to get it running. The system kept crashing and freezing and the reason was the "intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller" which I deactivated (or deinstalled, can't remember). As soon as I did that, the problems with the Saitek were immediately gone.

And the boot problem started occurring from time to time...
Now I fear those crashes broke something.
Related:

2 responses

xpcman Posts 19528 Registration date Wednesday October 8, 2008 Status Contributor Last seen June 15, 2019 1,824
Oct 30, 2014 at 01:13 PM
I suspect the memory clocking is a tad bit too fast for the motherboard. The BIOS might not get the correct status return codes when the MB is cold. I suggest you test with the memory clocked at 1866.

Good Luck
1
verun Posts 3 Registration date Thursday October 30, 2014 Status Member Last seen November 1, 2014
Oct 31, 2014 at 05:42 AM
Thank you, I'll try that.
Actually I saw today that the RAM LED on the board was not on when the problem occurred. It was on after several tries and then it booted fine.

Right now, I'm not running any XMP theme for the ram... it's left at stock. Maybe that's not good either?
AIDA 64 tells me the RAM runs at 665 MHz now... so DDR3-1333.
Maybe I have to change it to native settings via XMP again? I'll try that later.
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verun Posts 3 Registration date Thursday October 30, 2014 Status Member Last seen November 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 08:10 AM
It was the PSU. It's unable to provide the required energy output when the PC is turned on.
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