New Build - Gigabyte DS3 problem

squirrel6767

Hi,

Doing my first build and running into a bit of a problem. See parts list at end.
Summary - Gigabyte Poseidon case, Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard, Zalman CNPS7700 cpu cooler, Intel 6700 dual core chip.

First off - I know I messed up so forgive my ineptitude.

I hooked up all cables and power except for one - ATX_12v - reason being is that I did not immediatly find the square 4 pin plug needed from the Power supply (it was joined to another and to me it looked like an 8 pin plug).

Ok, I shouldnt have powered up without but I did.
Things seemed to come up ok with all fans kicking in (both case fans and cpu cooler).
But ... after about 20 secs everything powered down. Tried powering on again but no joy. Then I figured out how to connect the ATX_12v power - hooked it up - but still not a peep out of the PC.
I have pretty much gone through all the connections to confirm I have everything in order but cant get things going.

I am confused about one connection - the Zelmann CPU cooler - should it be plugged into CPU_FAN socket (cooler fan power connector) or the NB_FAN socket (chip fan power connector) - I dont know the difference between the two, chip and cpu cooler are the same? Anyway the pins are the same i.e. GND and 12v so I dont think I have shorted anything but I would like to know what is the right thing to do.

Same applies to the case front and rear fan - should that connection go into the SYS_FAN or the PWR_FAN? Same applies with polarity etc. shouldnt make a difference but the documentation is really confusing (to me anyway)

Is there any advice you can give - resetting cmos? What I am hoping is that the CMOS/BIOS kicked in initially and noted that the 12v connetion was missing and put the board into some suspend mode. Key to all of this is that it did power up initially for 20 secs.

Any advice on how to breathe some life into it?

Also - seeing that the DS3 is so popular has anyone come across better install instructions than those that come with it?

Thanks in advance
Pat


1 PCS 319574 Gigabyte Poseidon GZ-XA1CA-STB Black
Aluminium Front (Without PSU)

1 PCS 327048 NorthQ 4775-400BULK, ATX 400W, 120mm
Fan, 4xSATA, PCI-E, 20/24pin
1 PCS 313834 Corsair Value S. PC5300 DDR2 2048MB
Kit w/two matched Value Select 1024MB
1 PCS 320710 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 400GB SATA2
16MB 7200RPM
1 PCS 331011 LG DVD±RW burner, GSA-H42LRB, 18x,
Dual, LightScribe, Black and White
1 PCS 306456 Zalman CNPS7700-Cu CPU-Cooler
Socket 478/775/754/939/940
1 PCS 309575 MCE Remote control for Microsoft Windows
XP Media Center 2005 English

1 PCS 110513 Sunsway/ST Lab PCI FireWire 2+1P
w/Ulead Video Studio v7.0SE
1 PCS 323508 Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, P965, Socket-775,
ATX, SATAII, GbLAN, DDR2, 1xPCI-Ex16
1 PCS 330740 XFX GeForce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3,
PCI-Express, 2xDVI, 560/1400Mhz

Beecher

If someone knows better feel free to correct me but I believe there are no difference between the CPU_FAN socket and the NB_FAN socket with regards to voltages etc. The reason one is CPU and one is NB is because the bios reads certain details from these sockets like CPU speed etc.

Regarding the powering up issue the first thing that springs to mind was the mistake I made with my first build. I was so anxious to get it built didnt use the little raisers that came with the case so my mother board was screwed directly onto the steel side of the case which is not a good idea with so much current running through it.

hopeful

Plug the CPU fan into the CPU Fan socket
The other fans can be plugged into any of the other sockets.
Reset the Cmos by shorting the two pins for a second or two (power off for this) or by removing the cmos battery for a few minutes (see the manual on where these are.
Recheck that you have all the power connections correct...again the manual will be helpful...the instructions are clear on the power connections.

It is normal behaviour for this board for it to shut down and restart twice if the BIOS is changed...scared me the first time it happened!

Once you have double checked all the connections try restarting it again. Let us know how you get on.

squirrel6767

Beecher wrote:

If someone knows better feel free to correct me but I believe there are no difference between the CPU_FAN socket and the NB_FAN socket with regards to voltages etc. The reason one is CPU and one is NB is because the bios reads certain details from these sockets like CPU speed etc.

Regarding the powering up issue the first thing that springs to mind was the mistake I made with my first build. I was so anxious to get it built didnt use the little raisers that came with the case so my mother board was screwed directly onto the steel side of the case which is not a good idea with so much current running through it.

No, I did use the brass standoffs. It was a bit strange though. The MOBO is an ATX format and the Gigabyte chassis has 9 screw holes lined up to accomodate that factor (A1-A9). However I ended up having to do a swap around with holes lined up for other form factors so as to line up the DS3 MOBO and there are seven screws needed, not nine !!

Thanks for the info.

squirrel6767

hopeful wrote:

Plug the CPU fan into the CPU Fan socket
The other fans can be plugged into any of the other sockets.
Reset the Cmos by shorting the two pins for a second or two (power off for this) or by removing the cmos battery for a few minutes (see the manual on where these are.
Recheck that you have all the power connections correct...again the manual will be helpful...the instructions are clear on the power connections.

It is normal behaviour for this board for it to shut down and restart twice if the BIOS is changed...scared me the first time it happened!

Once you have double checked all the connections try restarting it again. Let us know how you get on.

Will do. Gonna start from scratch again. Hopefully resetting the CMOS will get her going again. Is there a difference between clearing the cmos (shorting the 2 pins) and erasing the cmos (taking battery out) in my boot up problem?

hopeful

squirrel6767 wrote:

Will do. Gonna start from scratch again. Hopefully resetting the CMOS will get her going again. Is there a difference between clearing the cmos (shorting the 2 pins) and erasing the cmos (taking battery out) in my boot up problem?

Nope...either will do the job.

squirrel6767

No joy on resetting/erasing CMOS. Still dead as a dodo.

Moved onto testing the PS (NQ-4775-400BU2) and specifically the 24 pin ATX connector.

When I connect a voltmeter to the 24 pin ATX connector from the PS I am only getting a reading on pins 9 (5V standby) and 16 (PS_ON - soft On/Off). All other pins not showing any voltage which I presume is why my Motherboard is not booting up. It seems from those 2 particular pins, going on their description, that I am only getting supplied standby voltage???

What I could surmise is that I have messed up the MOBO in some way and the reset/power-on switch on the front panel should link into those PS standby pins in some way which would toggle it from standby to full power. Does this sound plausible?


I have mailed NorthQ, the PS supplier, as to why it would be exhibiting the above but nothing back yet. Ill update if I get it.

In the meantime if anyone can shed some light please let me know.

8T8

NorthQ are very poor quality PSU's I would not be surprised if it was somehow at fault.

You can't break the motherboard by not plugging in the ATX 12v connector all that's happens depending on the board is it fails to power up or is unstable.

Pull the motherboard the case, take everything out from the motherboard bar the CPU/RAM/GPU now if you have access to any other PSU plug it in and see what happens.

{CPU_Fan always powers CPU fan cooler}
{SYS_FAN, PWR_FAN & NB_FAN are for any other case or chipset fans}

plonk

I had a similar problem with a ds3 and a zalman 9700. The ds3 is a smalller board than usual boards and thats why you only needed 7. But i did alot of searching and it seems to be a common problem. I cant remember the remedy but it turned out it was my fan that was busted and i got an rma.

I think you go into bios and turn off smart fan control

squirrel6767

plonk wrote:

I had a similar problem with a ds3 and a zalman 9700. The ds3 is a smalller board than usual boards and thats why you only needed 7. But i did alot of searching and it seems to be a common problem. I cant remember the remedy but it turned out it was my fan that was busted and i got an rma.

I think you go into bios and turn off smart fan control

Hmmm. Interesting. Thanks for the info. I am using a Zalman too (7500). I got the following from the Zalman web site.

2. The computer system may automatically shut down when booting the computer after the system monitoring program outputs a warning stating that the CPU fan is rotating slowly. In such a case, fully turn the Speed Control Knob in the clockwise direction before rebooting to disable the ‘CPU Fan Detected’ option in BIOS, or set the CPU fan’s rotational speed to 1,150rpm or lower in the system monitoring program.

I am away for a few days so no way of testing at the moment but I had thought that the speed control was fully on clockwise. I didnt get any beep warning but it does fall in line with the fact that the PC did boot along with ALL the fans for 20 secs before powering down.
In relation to going into the BIOS to turn off the smart fan control and/or CPU FAN detected - how would I do that if I cant get the thing going in the first place ??!!

Any more info you have on this "common" problem would be really appreciated.

It seems that there are a lot of variants in this build - sure, it would be no fun if everything went to plan

8T8

The fan set a max speed on the Zalman cooler shouldn't in theory trigger the auto shutdown.

Still an easy solution to disable the fan check is to simply plug in the stock CPU cooler if you have it which will run at full speed, power the Zalman cooler from one of the other fan headers so you don't have to remove the cooler.

Go into the bios disable fan speed check if not present hold down Ctrl+F1 to enabled hidden menu on Gigabyte boards, once done power off and plug Zalman back into CPU fan header.

squirrel6767

Just to close out on this issue I was having. It was indeed a failed power supply which died just 20 seconds after powering up. Diagnosing a PS failure is not the easiest but I found in the end using a volt meter allowed me to be pretty certain that it was the source before sending back to Komplett for replacement.

With the voltmeter (€5 from maplin) you can see if you are getting voltages across the different pins as per
http://pinouts.ru/Power/atx_v2_pinout.shtml

I was getting 5v on the standby pins 9 and 16 which was leading me to believe that it was not the PS and that it was the reset switch via the MOBO where the problem lay. However you can override the standby mode on the PS itself by shorting pin 16 to ground with a small wire. The PS should kick into life then with fan running and voltages on other pins. It did not for me so was then confident that I had a semi dead PS. Komplett were also happy and confirmed when I sent back that it was bad. New one swapped in and powered up PC without problem.

One question for anyone that has read this far - with a CPU coller fan - is it supposed to spin at a regular speed all the time or does it regulate according to the CPU temperature? Just want to make sure that my Zelmann isnt faulty as it does not spin continiously, sometimes stopping, but the temperature always stays around the 30 degrees.