[SOORENA]

Either that or a bad PSU. Do you have another PSU which you can try?

Soorena

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No I don't, the psu came with my Ultra Grid case. IS there a way to test the psu?

[mfarre03]

No I don't, the psu came with my Ultra Grid case. IS there a way to test the psu?

[SOORENA]

Yes there is you can use a paper clip to connect the Green and Black wires on the motherboard 20/24 pin connector and then flick on the switch, if it turns on its good and if not its dead. Make sure that you disconnect everything from the PSU first.

Soorena

[mfarre03]

I went out and purchased an Antec Earthwatt 500w psu from Bestbuy. The machine will now boot but does not see my Sata drive or Sata DVD burner. The HD is connected to Sata0 and the DVD is on Sata 1. I have never dealt with Sata so I have no idea what Im doing. Could someone push me in the right direction?

The CD rom still does not open. Is that because the MOBO doesnt know its there?

[SOORENA]

I went out and purchased an Antec Earthwatt 500w psu from Bestbuy. The machine will now boot but does not see my Sata drive or Sata DVD burner. The HD is connected to Sata0 and the DVD is on Sata 1. I have never dealt with Sata so I have no idea what Im doing. Could someone push me in the right direction?

Check the BIOS and make sure that RAID0 is turned off and that the HD mode is to SATA, you can access the BIOS by pressing the key that says "SETUP" when the computer just starts up, its either F2, DELETE, or F10, those are the ones I've seen over the years.

The CD rom still does not open. Is that because the MOBO doesnt know its there?

The CD-ROM not opening doesn't have anything to do with that since the switch is not connected in any way to the controller which sends signals to the motherboard, meaning that when you press the button it sends a signal directly to the CD-ROM and opens it. Make sure that the connector is in all the way and properly placed, also you can test this yourself by disconnecting the SATA connector and leaving just the SATA power connector in, that way the CD-ROM should open.

Soorena

[mfarre03]

Are you a 100% sure that the DVD will open? The HD doesn't spin up and the DVD doesn't open. This was the case when I was using the bad psu also. The bad psu was running the fans, floppy etc. Just seems like something else is wrong.

[SOORENA]

Well do you have any other component that you can test the PSU with? Maybe a spare hard drive or cd-rom?

Soorena

[mfarre03]

Nothing that I can test the Sata connections with, just Molex.

[SOORENA]

Thats fine we just need to see if there is power on the rails.

Soorena

[mfarre03]

The floppy drive IS working fine, just the Sata's seem that they are not working. I unplugged the Sata plugs to the mobo and still nothing, HD wont spin, Optical won't open. ...(this is what the tech guy from Gigabyte told me to do) He believes I have a bad psu...I figure its another bad psu or both drives are DOA, which I find very hard to believe.

[Troy]

Hi there,

I have been following this thread, and I believe it's highly likely that the PSU is faulty. If it can happen the first time, chances are it can happen again.

I truly believe those Ultra PSUs to be poor quality, that's why I would consider it first.

It must be very annoying from your position, that's for sure! I can't stand having faulty parts in my rig

Cheers

Troy

[mfarre03]

Ok but this psu replacement is an Antec Earthwatt 500, the same one you guys approved for your $1k build, LOL. I will buy the tester tomorrow from Radioshack before I send another psu back.

[BravoZulu]

I noticed that the OP never really stated if he was in the bios to see of the bios "sees" the SATA drives. Maybe in another thread? If not --OP get into your bios and make sure you set optimized defaults -- this is the very first thing to do with a new build. Second, look in your bios to see that all of your IDE and SATA's are recognized. Third, with gigabyte boards (I have built several AM2 AMD systems with some of the new gigabyte boards) you do a control/F1 while in the bios to get to the advanced section and check your specific memory timings. I see that your ram needs 2.0-2.1v to operate at the rated timings for cas 4 11*** timings -- so check that the memory voltage is set to 2.1 or 2.2v and 4-5-4 timings (11 being Tras). By default (when you set optimized defaults) the AM2 gigabyte boards have all SATA ports active and raid disabled -- so in effect what the SATA drives will do is IDE emulation.

If it were in my hands what I would do is re-seat the ram firmly -- making sure they are on proper dual channel slots, re-seat all of the SATA connections again on both HD side and mobo, then boot up and enter the bios (delete) when you see the gigabyte screen. Once in the bios set "optimized defaults", then look in your bios for the drives see if they are properly recognized in the bios and go ahead and hit the autodetect tab while you're there. Then do a control/F1 to get into the advanced section and look for ram voltage and memory timings and make sure that they pretty much match up with the ram specifications. especially the voltage. Save, exit the bios and see what happens.


Now, if you have issues with even so much as the DVD drive not opening and the HD not being seen then you likely have a bad/flakey motherboard, and in that case what I would do is RMA the motherboard and get the less expensive nVIDIA based SLI regular AM2 board (not the AM2+). The reason for that is that the 5600+ is a pretty good processor in it's own right and there likely won't be a quad core AMD worth upgrading to in the near future (clock speeds to low right now, and when it will be worth it the specifications and architecture will likely change again, or you might go Intel by that point anyway since they have a very good lead in the processor industry, and the fact that the regular AM2 Gigabyte SLI board works well as I have two friends that use it and they have no issues with it. You don't need to use the SLI function it's still a very good board just using one PCIe video card. EG regular AM2 processors seem to run better on regular AM2 motherboards (non AM2+).
-----------------------------------------


That said you can still get the same motherboard back from RMA if you wish it's up to you, but I think this is either:

1. A bad-flakey motherboard

~or~

2. Incorrect bios default handling of the memory you have (eg voltage and timings) or one stick of bad memory.

~or~

3. SATA connections are loose or bad

~or~

4.Bios needs to be updated


*I personally think you might have a flakey board or loose connections/bad cables.

Edited by BravoZulu, 06 March 2008 - 12:11 AM.

[mfarre03]

I pretty much have done all that except setting the Ram voltages. The computer posts into bios for me and no, I can't see any of the Sata drives. I don't seem to even have voltage goign to those drives. The HD won't spin up and the DVD won't open. I have hit the auto detect tab while I was in there and it shows 0.

[BravoZulu]

Two different power supplies and not even as much as a bios ID? AT this point I would RMA the motherboard if it were me (as long as you have verified the memory with memtest86 or a similar memory testing procedure). I must say that has never happened to me and I have built around 1000k PC's with PC and servers combined (or thereabouts). I have had some HDD's not recognized initially but not both the HD and optical.