Hello, I have never posted here before, so please excuse my inexperience. I'm not sure how much information I need to provide, so please feel free to ask for more information. Also, this might be a complicated problem which goes beyond the Gigabyte motherboard, but I would like to rule that out one component at a time.
About a year and a half ago, I got a GA-Z97X-UD5H rev 1.0 as part of a new PC build that I made myself. I use Windows 8.1, and I have two GeForce GTX 970 in SLI with the primary card in the first PCIe slot (closest to the CPU), and the other card in the second PCIe slot. My power supply is an EVGA 850 G2. I have three monitors plugged into the primary video card: one each into the two DVI slots, and another one in the HDMI slot. I also remembered to plug in the extra power cable connecting to the motherboard ATX4P PCIe power connector.
Here's the problem, and please forgive me because I might not be able to explain it in all the technical terms due to my inexperience:
When I turn on the computer, the motherboard just toggles between the main bios LED and the backup bios LED about every few seconds. The debug LED code display never shows anything. I presume that for whatever reason the motherboard fails to load the bios and the backup bios. The board keeps toggling between the LEDs indefinitely, and nothing ever progresses. Everything seems to be receiving power. The case fans, cpu fan, and gpu fans spin the whole time. The hard drives and disk drive also seem to receive power because I can hear them spinning up.
I have tried resetting the CMOS using three methods: the onboard CMOS reset button, removing the battery, and using the jumper prongs. This doesn't have any effect. However, if I press the onboard CMOS reset button while the board is powered on (during the LED toggling limbo), then the computer will reset, but this time it *usually* boots up successfully all the way to the OS. I know that the instruction manual says that you should not reset CMOS while the board is powered, but I have done it many times now. It almost always works. If the board is in the LED toggling limbo for a while before I reset CMOS, it usually doesn't work, so I will have to do it again after about a second, and then it usually works.
Here comes the second part of the problem. After I boot up to OS, everything seems to work correctly except that one of my monitors in the DVI slot doesn't work. It has power, and it doesn't say "check cable connection". It just has a black screen, and the computer software cannot seem to detect it at all. Sometimes when I update my video drivers, change my monitor resolution, or toggle SLI on/off, the monitor will "kick in" and then everything will be normal again, but this is rare, and I have not been able to reproduce it. If I power down the computer, I have to go through the LED toggling problem again, and it usually seems to end up with this same monitor problem again anyway. I have tried replacing the monitor with one that is known to work, and the same problem happens to the new monitor. I will try to do some additional testing with different monitors and cables, but I don't have very many extra components laying around.
I thought that the power supply might not be strong enough to support everything. I tried removing all the components. I booted the computer with just the motherboard, cpu, cpu fan, and power supply. The same LED toggling problem happened. I tried adding back my memory, and the same problem happened still. I concluded that there must be something wrong with the motherboard, so I sent it in for an RMA. It was accepted, but when they received it, they determined that nothing was wrong with it. When I got it back, the same problems still happened.
At this point, my question is, what else should I try? I'm not really sure which component is causing the problem. If I reset my computer enough times, eventually it will work with all the monitors, and then I typically just leave the computer running or use sleep mode, so it never has to be completely turned off. This means that the computer usually works fine for a long time, but eventually it will fail to wake up from sleep and it will have to be powered on normally. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
About a year and a half ago, I got a GA-Z97X-UD5H rev 1.0 as part of a new PC build that I made myself. I use Windows 8.1, and I have two GeForce GTX 970 in SLI with the primary card in the first PCIe slot (closest to the CPU), and the other card in the second PCIe slot. My power supply is an EVGA 850 G2. I have three monitors plugged into the primary video card: one each into the two DVI slots, and another one in the HDMI slot. I also remembered to plug in the extra power cable connecting to the motherboard ATX4P PCIe power connector.
Here's the problem, and please forgive me because I might not be able to explain it in all the technical terms due to my inexperience:
When I turn on the computer, the motherboard just toggles between the main bios LED and the backup bios LED about every few seconds. The debug LED code display never shows anything. I presume that for whatever reason the motherboard fails to load the bios and the backup bios. The board keeps toggling between the LEDs indefinitely, and nothing ever progresses. Everything seems to be receiving power. The case fans, cpu fan, and gpu fans spin the whole time. The hard drives and disk drive also seem to receive power because I can hear them spinning up.
I have tried resetting the CMOS using three methods: the onboard CMOS reset button, removing the battery, and using the jumper prongs. This doesn't have any effect. However, if I press the onboard CMOS reset button while the board is powered on (during the LED toggling limbo), then the computer will reset, but this time it *usually* boots up successfully all the way to the OS. I know that the instruction manual says that you should not reset CMOS while the board is powered, but I have done it many times now. It almost always works. If the board is in the LED toggling limbo for a while before I reset CMOS, it usually doesn't work, so I will have to do it again after about a second, and then it usually works.
Here comes the second part of the problem. After I boot up to OS, everything seems to work correctly except that one of my monitors in the DVI slot doesn't work. It has power, and it doesn't say "check cable connection". It just has a black screen, and the computer software cannot seem to detect it at all. Sometimes when I update my video drivers, change my monitor resolution, or toggle SLI on/off, the monitor will "kick in" and then everything will be normal again, but this is rare, and I have not been able to reproduce it. If I power down the computer, I have to go through the LED toggling problem again, and it usually seems to end up with this same monitor problem again anyway. I have tried replacing the monitor with one that is known to work, and the same problem happens to the new monitor. I will try to do some additional testing with different monitors and cables, but I don't have very many extra components laying around.
I thought that the power supply might not be strong enough to support everything. I tried removing all the components. I booted the computer with just the motherboard, cpu, cpu fan, and power supply. The same LED toggling problem happened. I tried adding back my memory, and the same problem happened still. I concluded that there must be something wrong with the motherboard, so I sent it in for an RMA. It was accepted, but when they received it, they determined that nothing was wrong with it. When I got it back, the same problems still happened.
At this point, my question is, what else should I try? I'm not really sure which component is causing the problem. If I reset my computer enough times, eventually it will work with all the monitors, and then I typically just leave the computer running or use sleep mode, so it never has to be completely turned off. This means that the computer usually works fine for a long time, but eventually it will fail to wake up from sleep and it will have to be powered on normally. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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