Puter died need advice

[BlackAdder]

Hi Guys, My Asus M3A78-T which is 2 years old died after a reboot yesterday... I have a Phenom2 940 quad,2 gig Corsair ram, Corsair HX620W PSU...I was trying to access vista which is in a second drive, got into the bios, changed boot priority to vista's drive and then nothing after it shut down. The fans cut on, the motherboard power on light is on, no posting of any kind, no beeps, nothing. Below the regulator heat sink next to the processor the MB has a oily film and feel, but I can't see where it is coming from . Could my processor have died instead of the board? Will it still try to post without a processor ? Any ideas ??
Sorry I haven't been around much in a while, after my arm healed from last years accident I have taken on a QC position at work and we are going for the ISO 9001 certification, needless to say I am very busy...still crunching though !! Thanks for any suggestions !

[Dirk Broer]

Do you have any other CPU that you can try on the same Mobo? Can you tru the CPU on another Mobo?

[BlackAdder]

This is a Am2+ mb which is socket 940, I have a Opteron 180 which is 939 pin so it is not compatible. I have just ordered a triple core from newegg to fit this socket which was fairly cheap and put in for a rma with Asus... yea the processor may have died...

[Ramjet]

The only times I've experienced this was with a shorted modem, a bad cdrom drive, a dead Cmos battery, and even once I just had to reseat the cpu. I would suggest unplugging everything possible from the mb except the power supply, remove all the add on cards, check the voltage of the battery and replace if necessary, remove all but one stick of ram, then power it up, if nothing yet, replace the stick of ram with another, or try a different slot, reseat the cpu, try another power supply, you may have one voltage that's out of limits. I've only ever had one cpu go bad, and that was because the mb was bad and fried the cpu immediately upon powering it up.
Good Luck, I hope this helps

[AMDave]

Below the regulator heat sink next to the processor the MB has a oily film and feel, but I can't see where it is coming from

That sounds like capacitor leakage.
The (usually) upright back and blue cylinders on your mobo are the Cap.s
They should all have a silver top that is flat with 3 grooves running from the circumference and meeting in the middle.
/EDIT - some still have 4 grooves - EDIT/
If they get too hot (as they age) they start to bulge outwards.
If they 'blow' you might see a little bit of brown gunk on the silver-top of the Cap. that could be mistaken for fly-sh*t or cockroach-cr*p.
It generally means that the capacitor is dying or has blown out and will be dead shortly if it is not already.

/EDIT - this is actually a safety feature so that they don't boil and then explode, but crack open and leak-out instead - EDIT/

Re the chipset heatsink - if you pull the mobo out, you should be able to release the chipset heatsink from underneath the mobo carefully with some fine-point pliers.
If you do that make sure you have some het-sink paste to put it back on with.

Luckily I have enough bits-and bobs lying around to be able to 'bench-test' my components.
Swap out the PSU, test, Swap out the CPU, test, swap out the RAM, test, etc.
If you can't do that, a couple of choice beers and a slow afternoon at the local PC/electronics shop can work wonders.
I had to do that once, for DN02.
I yanked the mobo without the case PSU or HDD etc
Took it to my preferred PC retailer at the time
The techie found that the RAM had failed AND was part of a bad batch that had been recalled by the manufacturer.
Lucky me.
I was able to get replacement RAM from the seller (keep all of your receipts always!)
I forgot to ask him if he enjoyed the beers. :P

[SuicideCabbage]

That sounds like capacitor leakage.

I originally thought this too, as I have been hit by capacitor plague on more than one occasion, but I did a little research on the board he has and it seems to be using solid capacitors. I've had computers that would not post or beep, and it was solved by a simple BIOS reset. He said he was poking around the BIOS before this happen maybe something did not save correctly. I've also had one that after shutdown would refuse to post unless power was cut (powersupply turned off or unplugged) and all charge was allowed (or forced) to drain, after that it would power right up and run like a champ, until the next time it was shutdown. Whenever I've had RAM or some other component failure the motherboard would angrily beep at me when I attempted to power up.

[AMDave]

You can check that the CMOS battery, if the mobo has one, has leaked.

[BlackAdder]

Well a different question, the board was rma'd and it died about 5 minutes after startup again.... going to send it back again.

I bought a new " OEM " M3A78-T off of Ebay, it runs only with a lowly Athlon X@ dual core 3800+, I have put in two new Phenom2 X3 715's, and a new Phenom2 920. The bios will handle either cpu... it will not post with either cpu, no beep, only the fans run and I think I can hear the hard drives spin up. NOTHING. I tried a hard bios reset , pulled the power cord, cmos battery, and held in the power up button for 10 seconds... still nothing. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make a OEM board act like a retail board ?? I would have thought it made no difference , either board should have full capabilities of whatever the board can do but it seems like it doesn't. I did not however pull out the GeForce video card and try to boot it up with the new cpu's and on board video only, anyone think that may be the problem ?? Thanks all !!

[Dirk Broer]

What makes you think the board can handle the Phenom2 X3 715 or the Phenom2 920? I cannot find the M3A78-T on the ASUS website, so I asume it has the lowest spec of any of the M3A78 boards them do list, the M3A78 PRO, just to be sure. That means yes, it will take the two CPUs you mention on all PCB version, BUT the bios has to be at least 0902 for the 715 and at least 0702 for the 920. Both will in fact transfer you to the download of M3A78 PRO BIOS 1602. What is your current BIOS?

[BlackAdder]

I had a Phenom2 940 in the retail board I have identical to this one, a link to the Asus site on this board is http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=PaJTmB4aZ9WAYnM6
it is rated to accept the x6's, I have tried bios rev. 1907 which allows the x6's and I pulled the bios chip out of my dead board and it is bios rev. 1904. Neither will even allow the board to beep while trying to post with anything but the athlon 64 X2 3800+. Getting kinda frustrated with this oem board... at least it runs...
This is a link to the ebay auction I bought it through http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWAX:IT
it says in the red letters these were oem bulk pack motherboards