Endless Paradigm

basically send it back to Asus, claim its defective, and get them to replace it. Based on the symptoms you described, your far from alone in the problem

i bought it on eBay, will that be a problem?

Ahh....indeed it will. They generally arent to happy about retunrs from 3rd parties (assumnig a second party is a legit store in this case)


Just try a new BIOS chip in that case, worst case scenario you can throw it back onto ebay if its broke and just lie :P

well, the BIOS is a removable Integrated Circuit in a socket.

so i can buy the new chip, try it, and if it doesn't work, replace the old one and try to RMA it

Have you tried putting your graphics card in a different slot to boot? I remember with Asus boards, I had to boot it up with a graphics card in the second slot before being able to use the first slot (pci-e x16). Are your ram in the first set of 3 slots or the second. Asus x58 boards are picky about that too.

ProperBritish Wrote:there is also an issue, if the BIOS is out of date the stepping on this CPU is not compatible with it, making the CPU incompatible. would that lead to a complete failure to boot?

Nope - well, not in my experience.  PC should boot, but BIOS may not recognise special capabilities of the CPU, including stepping, multiple cores etc until you run the BIOS update.

Does the board have any diagnostic functionality?  Have a skim through the manual.

ProperBritish Wrote:i have a 700W supply, i havent broken it because the fan spins up... i need to get a case speaker off of my old PC at my dad's house and plug it in to see if anything happens.

there is also an issue, if the BIOS is out of date the stepping on this CPU is not compatible with it, making the CPU incompatible. would that lead to a complete failure to boot?

in my mind logically if the board won't recognise a particular stepping it won't know what frequency to operate (or won't be able to select the correct frequency) so therefore i would conclude that it wouldnt even allow the cpu to start.

i assume you tried resetting the bios using the jumper on the board? it could simply be an incompatability with a setting in the bios, however if many people are having problems with this card then my advice is dump it - your basically asking for more problems even if you do get it to work.

ProperBritish Wrote:well, the BIOS is a removable Integrated Circuit in a socket.

so i can buy the new chip, try it, and if it doesn't work, replace the old one and try to RMA it

umm why change the chip - the software is unique (i.e. the bios has to be compatible with the motherboard or it won't work) so using another chip won't work unless it is from the same model of machine.

anyway it does sound like it may be the cpu - this stepping issue could be a problem unless you can get a compatible bios onto the chip perhaps using another graphics card.

ProperBritish Wrote:well, the BIOS is a removable Integrated Circuit in a socket.

so i can buy the new chip, try it, and if it doesn't work, replace the old one and try to RMA it

I believe there is an option for this board to boot/recover a bios file off a DVD and USB flash memory drive. You could try doing that first. In the pdf manual off the website, it tells you how on page 3-5.

darkxvx Wrote:Have you tried putting your graphics card in a different slot to boot? I remember with Asus boards, I had to boot it up with a graphics card in the second slot before being able to use the first slot (pci-e x16). Are your ram in the first set of 3 slots or the second. Asus x58 boards are picky about that too.

tried it, nothing

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Nope - well, not in my experience.  PC should boot, but BIOS may not recognise special capabilities of the CPU, including stepping, multiple cores etc until you run the BIOS update.

Does the board have any diagnostic functionality?  Have a skim through the manual.

asus reported complete inability to recognise newer CPUs than the BIOS can recognise. this is an ex-display motherboard, leading me to tihnk it has sat there since launch and done nothing, meaning it is on the first revision of the BIOS, that's incompatible with the D0 step CPU. All i7 CPUs are stepped, i assume if it does not recognise the step it will fail to boot.

darkxvx Wrote:I believe there is an option for this board to boot/recover a bios file off a DVD and USB flash memory drive. You could try doing that first. In the pdf manual off the website, it tells you how on page 3-5.

i can't upgrade the BIOS while blind, so to speak.

I had the same problem. Built PC. started, was fine, but no display.

My solution was simply, take it apart (everything, including removing reattaching fans to Graphics card) and rebuilding.
IT WORKED! (don't ask why :S i don't know)

I used a radeon 4730 graphics. Similar model i believe so its not a huge difference there