Tower not booting

[Djinni]

Ran into a bit of a hitch last night. Here's the requisite info:

Computer Specs:

Tower	Case	Fractal Design Define R-4
	PSU	Fractal Design Newton 800W
	CPU	Intel i7 2600k @ 4.4GHz
	CPU Cooler	Thermaltake Frio
	Motherboard	ASUS P8Z68 V-PRO
	RAM	2x4GB G.Skill RipJaws-X DDR3
	GPU1	VTX AMD Radeon HD 7870
	GPU2	MSI 560Ti Twin FrozrII/OC
	SoundCard	Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
	SSD1	256GB Samsung Evo Basic
	HDD1	1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3
	HDD2	1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3
	HDD3	3TB Western Digital Caviar Red
	HDD4	3TB Western Digital Caviar Red
	HDD5	2TB Seagate Baracuda Eco Green
	Case Fans	6x 140mm Case Fan
Peripherals	Keyboard	Microsoft SideWinder X6
	Mouse	Corsair M95
	Microphone	Blue Snowball
	IR	USB Media Center IR Reciever
	Card Reader	Transcend USB Card Reader
	HDD6	4TB Seagate Backup Plus
	Speakers	Creative Inspire T6300 5.1
Displays	Screen1	23″ LG Flatron IPS236
	Screen2	22″ 3D 120Hz Samsung 2233RZ + 3D nVidia Active Steroscopic Glasses
	TV	46″ 3D 200Hz Samsung UE46F6320 + 3D Glasses

A little background first:

VTX AMD Radeon HD 7870 bought from colleague at work second hand. Initially worked fine and has until this week, replaced my MSI 560Ti as my main graphics card. with it supporting the primary IPS display and the TV.
After my upgrade to the Fractal Design R4 case I began to notice that the AMD card was starting to run a lot hotter than would be liked. (Although I'm actually convinced that with the 6 Fans and Positive pressure the airflow in the R4 case is far better than that in the Antec with 2 intake and 3 out-take fans which was prone to getting very dusty.)
Since the card has started running rather hot I have switched back to using the MSI 560Ti for my gaming display and things have been going pretty good.


The issue:
Last night I wanted to watch a movie on the TV but noticed that I wasn't getting an output from the AMD card. I unplugged the HDMI lead for the TV and plugged it back in. Problem solved moving on.
About an episode later the machine just turned itself off. At first I assumed that one of us had inadvertently pressed the sleep button on the remote. However the machine was unresponsive to remote control or keyboard input. Pressed the power button and nothing happened. Decided to call it a night at this point and went to bed.
Fast forward to the morning.
Decided to have another quick crack at it before heading into work. So things I tried:

• Put the tower on the anti vibration mat I got a couple of days back to make sure it's not directly on carpet.
• Unplugged all peripherals - power light comes on the first time it is pressed after the power supply is turned on, subsequent presses net no results.
• opened side of the case, the two buttons on the motherboard to power and reset are lit. However pressing them results in: brief red light power flash from multiple LED's on the board (I haven't yet taken out any internal components so can't identify exactly which ones.)
• Temporarily plugged in my old power supply (nothing wrong with it, just switched it out for a modular one) just connecting it up to the motherboard, nothing else attached. Same results as previously.

[Sturmbringe]

Check that motherboard power cables firmly fit into their respective mobo sockets. Check the power cables firmly fit into their respective PSU sockets. Remove peripherals and try booting up again. I'd start with the GPU.

[Deleted]

To what sturmbringe said, check the pins on the connectors, sometimes (although rare) the pins inside the connector cable can get pushed back and they dont touch fully the mobo or any other component.
If nothing of those work, since you checked the psu, i would try and reset the mobo.

[Cyrops]

Just to be sure, have you tried with all the GPU's removed, no ram just CPU in mobo and PSU connected to mobo? If so, dead mobo :X

[Djinni]

Just to be sure, have you tried with all the GPU's removed, no ram just CPU in mobo and PSU connected to mobo? If so, dead mobo :X

Didn't get that far yet. It's next on my list. Had to leave for the office before I had a chance to do much more than substitute the PSU.

- - - Updated - - -

To what sturmbringe said, check the pins on the connectors, sometimes (although rare) the pins inside the connector cable can get pushed back and they dont touch fully the mobo or any other component.

Given the amount of time that the machine has been working with its current setup without issue I'm going to consider this an extemely unlikely option.

If nothing of those work, since you checked the psu, i would try and reset the mobo.

You mean the CMOS?

[Deleted]

Yes remove battery for 5-10min so mobo resets back to default or if your mobo has a reset button on it for that.

[Indless]

I Know you have a good PSU, anyone else think thats a huge load for a 800w?

[Djinni]

I Know you have a good PSU, anyone else think thats a huge load for a 800w?

I do... but:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ly-good-enough
Also to be fair, the monitored pull from the wall is rarely over 280W

I also checked that theroy this morning by switching in the old PSU.

[Indless]

If you tested the old pSU, its probably your motherboard then

[thaynia]

4.4 Ghz on your CPU, sounds like you're doing some overclocking. I'd imagine you're not supplying enough voltage to the chip and the system isn't booting properly. As some have mentioned.... Reset your CMOS battery so the system will boot up in defaults.

I've also had a system fail to boot up because the ram slots were dirty. I had to take it in to get it cleaned because the canned air wasn't enough to clean it.

Can you be a bit more specific with the tower not booting? Does it start to boot then shut off?

[Djinni]

Not booting in this case is:
Power button pressed (as one normally would to turn it on)
Results:
- If done after reconnecting the power supply, the power light glows for about 1 seconds then fades, no other components show signs of receiving power./ (Fans don't spin up, hard drives don't spin up) - Motherboard LED's flash, not sure which ones yet.
- If done at any other time, (eg a second time, or not after reconnecting the power supply) nothing happens at all.

The entire time that the power supply is connected the power and reset lights for the built in buttons on the motherboard are lit.
Again, results as the same as using the standard case power button.

The OC has been in and unchanged for just over 2 years now. With no ill effects and only a minor increase in temp (maybe 5 - 10C hotter than stock speed.)

[thaynia]

Not booting in this case is:
The OC has been in and unchanged for just over 2 years now. With no ill effects and only a minor increase in temp (maybe 5 - 10C hotter than stock speed.)

The temperatures aren't what is worrying me. Minor variations in the power supplied to the cpu can cause the system not to boot. For example, I had run an overclock for about a year, recently I updated the bios and those settings would no longer boot the system and I had to up the voltage, since you're pushing around the 50th percentile of the i7-2600k, it may be necessary to up the voltage to the cpu, but in your case that may not be a possibility, therefore reset the system OC settings and drop it from 4.4 to 4.2 or something. Also your tag says you run it at 4.8Ghz, if this is the case, you're definitely pushing the limits of a 2600k (the higher end, i'd say 80th percentile) and your bios settings may be insufficient. If you haven't tried resetting the bios by removing the CMOS battery, I would definitely try that. Did you overclock the system manually? Have a friend do it? Or use intel's OC software in windows?

Have you tried removing the new video card?

Also, if you re-seat the RAM, does it boot differently?

[Djinni]

Ok, looks like it was the AMD Graphics card.

Took the AMD Graphics Card out and the computer booted no problem.
Put it back in to test if it was bad seating, and back to the result from before.

PS. This is one of the good overclockers, I've pushed it to 4.9 before but it was running too hot for my taste and I dropped it back to 4.5 for the summer. Dropped it down to 4.4 when I went on one of my "need to use less power" trips.

[thaynia]

Ok, looks like it was the AMD Graphics card.

Took the AMD Graphics Card out and the computer booted no problem.
Put it back in to test if it was bad seating, and back to the result from before.

PS. This is one of the good overclockers, I've pushed it to 4.9 before but it was running too hot for my taste and I dropped it back to 4.5 for the summer. Dropped it down to 4.4 when I went on one of my "need to use less power" trips.

Well it's good to hear it's the card! What were you trying to accomplish by having both cards in there? I know you have to have the same card to SLI/crossfire, but I've never heard of someone using 1 of each brand. I guess you'd run one as a physX?

[Djinni]

Well it's good to hear it's the card! What were you trying to accomplish by having both cards in there? I know you have to have the same card to SLI/crossfire, but I've never heard of someone using 1 of each brand. I guess you'd run one as a physX?

I suppose so. (The guy who I bought it off has offered me the 460 in exchange that I had thought of buying. So it's not a total loss for my part... but he's going to be taking a bit of a hit unless someone decides they want to buy a mostly dead GPU.)

Actually I was using the AMD card mostly for video. because for some reason Windows Media Player won't play Video on the display when connected to the iGPU. And VLC doesn't play nicely with my Media Centre Remote.
Also given that it was a little more "powerful" than my 560Ti is was also using it for my primary display, and just running the secondary screen off the 560Ti.