Hello all,
I believe I have a Southbridge failure on the board I got in early 2005.
My system refuses to post, following a RAM upgrade.
Its fans and lights come up, but it has no video.
The board is a Gigabyte GA-8IP775-G, with a 2.8 GHz P4 they installed for me at the PC fair, I'm not sure which subtype it is. It is in a homebuild that I put together in early 2005. Uses an AGP card, currently an ATI Radeon 9800 pro., has a 120GB IDE drive that is multi-boot, a laser USB mouse, and USB keyboard. The tower is that silver Warrior model Newegg used to have, and I upgraded the fans. The power supply is the case original 450W, as it seems more robust than the replacement 550W I got that started to smell like it was frying itself within a year. I recently had a USB controller and a 2.0 extension cable plugged into it too, and was using the onboard LAN. It's plugged into a Dell monitor.
The issue occurred a few hours after I added a 1GB pc3200 chip to my 786MB last week and did a few hours of web browsing, then had it sitting on the highest program load I expected to regularly run, for three hours....then:
First the USB mouse froze, and I still had keyboard and video response; I saw nothing odd in the performance tabs, but was preparing to restart to get the mouse back.
Then the keyboard stopped responding while I was shutting programs off, and the system locked even sound up, so restart became more imperative to see if BIOS said the memory was no longer all detected and "OK".
Then I noticed the smell of something overheating, and it seemed to be coming from where the RAM was...so I shut the system off via holding the power button.
I unplugged, pulled the chip and restarted, but it had a blank screen, and I didn't hear any happy post chirp. The monitor doesn't give me the "no signal" screen if plugged into the video card, it stays on standby. No flicker or anything, but it works for the system the video card and it come from.
I have tried:
removing the new memory - still no video or post. All fans and the power light, HD access light, come up as if it is booting, and stay up like a normal start.
reducing the memory to the original chip it came with - same
reseating the video card - still no video or post.
swapping video cards - same
clearing cmos - same
boot without agp video card - same
disconnected HD boot with cd drive on - same
barebones of board, ram, power button - still the cpu fan spinup and front light comes on, but no video or post.
So I decided to create a more basic error state and see what the response was:
boot without RAM - immediately got an angry "stuck key" sort of very fast beep similar to, but in a higher pitch than, a buffer overflow. The power LED flickered in time with the beep. Didn't matter what other parts were attached.
Phoenix endless beeps can be a variety of things, usually RAM. But booting single-stick with each of the three chips and moving around the bays has the same no-boot issue.
This is the only response I have gotten out of it.
I finally pulled the board out to inspect it.
All the capacitors look properly shaped and colored.
All other components look normal and still shiny, if a tad dusty in the clustered spots.
The only spots that might explain the overheating smell:
Two fingerprint-sized patches of the blue enamel on the back are noticeably darkened, and I thought corresponded to the central end of the memory bays. But they also sit right above the southbridge.
Southbridge has a tiny dot in the middle that looks shiny like an oil drop or water, but it is hard and does not come off with some gentle fingernail scraping, and is not centered like an orientation dot. It doesn't have a white ash center like those fried southbridge photos.
It also has residue that resembles that in smoker-owned electronics, only along the edge that would be highest when it is mounted in the tower. This residue does not smell. The original smell was a bit like electronics flux.
The board looking like when I got it, other than around Southbridge, coupled with the USB devices failing right before the system became unbootable, suggests that this chip has failed.
Unfortunately, that's not a part I can swap out. If this board is effectively dead, my question then becomes what board can I get now that is the closest capability and parts usage analog? I was doing quite well with current programs with what I have, and updating the rig is still a while off.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
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