Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H doesn’t POST on power on

As I mentioned in my earlier post here, I recently rebuilt my home server. I upgraded the Motherboard, CPU and CPU cooler. After doing some research for upgrade hardware, I settled on the AMD A8-7600 processor and the Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H motherboard. This motherboard is perfect for a home server due to the 8x SATA3 ports and 4 memory slots available. It is also one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) to offer 8x SATA3 slots. I was reusing my existing Antec 300 case and Corsair 400W power supply for the build.

The build went fine with a few hiccups (pro-tip: put the backplate in before screwing in the motherboard and go easy with the thermal paste). However, when I finished the build and hit the power button, the machine wouldn’t boot. All the fans spun up and the LAN port light was blinking but there was no output from the display. I went through the trouble shooting steps methodically all the while wondering if I had managed to fry the motherboard or damage the CPU somehow (or maybe had gotten a lemon with either one):

• Checked all the cable connections (esp. the ones providing power to the CPU) carefully to make sure nothing was amiss
• Checked the wiring of the power and reset switches to the Motherboard to make sure I hadn’t messed something up
• Tried different display ports (HDMI, DVI, VGA) – no dice.
• Tried different memory sticks from other working computers, tried one memory stick at a time
• Unplugged all peripherals except monitor and keyboard, unplugged all hard drives to see if any of them were causing an issue
• Took everything apart and confirmed the CPU was seated properly and no pins were bent (this was very painful to go through)

At the end of all these steps, I still couldn’t get the PC to POST. At this point, I was almost ready to throw the towel in and figure out if I should get the Motherboard back for RMA or the CPU or both. However, in a moment of inspiration or luck, I decided to do something a little crazy. I pressed the reset button on the case while the power was on – and guess what??!! That did the trick – the machine POSTed flawlessly. I couldn’t believe my luck. Just to confirm that I hadn’t screwed up the wiring, I double checked the power and reset switch wiring and there was absolutely nothing wrong with the way I had wired it up. I shut the machine down and tried it again and sure enough – the machine powered up when I hit the power button but only started POSTing when the reset button was hit.

I don’t know if this is a problem with just the specific combination of case + Motherboard or just an issue with the Motherboard. Either way, I’m really happy that I got the PC to work and not have to go through the hassle of an RMA. Other than this glitch, I’m still very happy with my choice for the Motherboard and everything has worked very well after boot (for e.g. Ubuntu 14.04 installed fine with no issues on this build).

When I went through the reviews for the Motherboard in detail a couple of days ago at Newegg, I saw that several people had posted reviews with the same problem but without a solution – I hope this post helps others who buy this Motherboard and hit this issue.