I recently had the unfortunate opportunity of several of my graphics cards going bad. I had originally sent this board in for an RMA because the PCI-E slots were defective and not working. I was told it was repaired and received the board back. I recently had two GTX 550 ti graphics cards running in SLi go bad. I could understand one card going bad, but both at the same time made me suspicious. I purchased a replacement GTX 670 FTW which upon connection to the board would not get recognized by the motherboard. I RMA'd that video card and received a replacement card. This replacement GTX 670 FTW did connect to the motherboard, but it would lose connection after about 5 minutes regardless if I was in the BIOS or in Windows. This happened in both PCI-Ex16 slots. This is my most current problem. I have spoken with the tech support for this card and am having this one RMA'd as well. It will be here in 3 days.
Due to the rare circumstances of 4 different graphics cards going bad within 10 days I was wondering if something is wrong with my motherboard again?
Some other symptoms I have been having are:
Sometimes the windows 7 themes will not launch correctly (random)
Sometimes I get a loading icon for what seems like several minutes when I try to right click on my desktop
motherboard cache errors (Only saw this come up twice and I think is likely due to clearing CMOS so much)
It has always powered up for about 5 seconds, then powering off for 2 seconds, then finally booting to BIOS after another 5-10 seconds of powering up.
Once it reaches the BIOS it can take up to 5 minutes before it finally enters windows.
It also starts crashing with more than 8GB of ram even though I am running windows 7x64 which is supposed to allow at least 16.
When booting to safe mode, it gets to the welcome screen and then restarts.
I was wondering if you could tell me whether or not these symptoms are being caused by something going wrong with my motherboard again.
Please note:
Most of these problems have been occurring with BIOS FH, but I had to clear my CMOS in an attempt to troubleshoot my graphics cards so I am back at stock.
My power supply has already been tested and replaced about 1 year ago
My ram has passed one memtest cycle
I would update the bios to FH, but I have no working graphics card to navigate so I can update it.
Some additional testing I performed:
I took the time to test my old 550ti's in a different computer and they passed a 15minute test on furmark without any errors, so I may have been RMA'ing cards for nothing.
Tested one of these back in my affected computer after it had been unplugged and with only 1 stick or ram inside and it didn't have any issues for the 20minutes I was on before rebooting.
I then tried 3 sticks of ram (slots 1,3,5) and it appeared to be running OK, then I hopped into a game of RisingStorm and the screen flashed white and then acted like there was no card connected again.
After this happened I have not been able to get the computer to get back into bios. I am hearing either 1long and 1 short or 1long and 2short beeps when it tries to post.
Sorry this is so long. I really just want my computer to work.