{"id":217,"date":"2015-09-24T20:50:36","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T04:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/?p=217"},"modified":"2015-09-24T20:50:36","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T04:50:36","slug":"gigabyte-ga-f2a88xm-d3h-doesnt-post-on-power-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/blog\/2015\/09\/24\/gigabyte-ga-f2a88xm-d3h-doesnt-post-on-power-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H doesn&#8217;t POST on power on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned in my earlier post <a href=\"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/blog\/2015\/09\/23\/mhddfs-crash-with-ubuntu-14-04\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113371\" target=\"_blank\">AMD A8-7600 processor<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128659\" target=\"_blank\">Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H<\/a> 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\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129042\" target=\"_blank\">Antec 300 case<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139008\" target=\"_blank\">Corsair 400W<\/a>\u00a0power supply for the build.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Checked all the cable connections (esp. the ones providing power to the CPU) carefully to make sure nothing was amiss<\/li>\n<li>Checked the wiring of the power and reset switches to the Motherboard to make sure I hadn&#8217;t messed something up<\/li>\n<li>Tried different display ports (HDMI, DVI, VGA) &#8211; no dice.<\/li>\n<li>Tried different memory sticks from other working computers, tried one memory stick at a time<\/li>\n<li>Unplugged all peripherals except monitor and keyboard, unplugged all hard drives to see if any of them were causing an issue<\/li>\n<li>Took everything apart and confirmed the CPU was seated properly and no pins were bent (this was very painful to go through)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At the end of all these steps, I still couldn&#8217;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 &#8211; and guess what??!! That did the trick &#8211; the machine POSTed flawlessly. I couldn&#8217;t believe my luck. Just to confirm that I hadn&#8217;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 &#8211; the machine powered up when I hit the power button but only started POSTing when the reset button was hit.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;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).<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8211; I hope this post helps others who buy this Motherboard and hit this issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[81,80,82],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-server","tag-antec-300","tag-gigabyte-ga-f2a88xm-d3h","tag-pc-doesnt-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nramkumar.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}