GA-Q35M-S2 Power behaviour

[Tidosho]

Hi everyone,

I just bought a GA-Q35M-S2 motherboard from eBay. The board is 2 months old and decommisioned from a datacentre server. When the mains is plugged in, the system fires up, my hard drive spins and initializes. About 2-4 seconds later the system shuts down with a clank from the hard drive. I've only ever used Gigabyte motherboards at home and work (I'm a PC repair engineer), and know this is not normal behaviour. Once the system does this it will power on as normal and everything, it's as though it's a power self test, but it's going to do some damage to the hard drive over time.

I'm aware that a system usually powers on by itself if the BIOS power management is set to on mains failure, as I have most of my servers set this way. However, this board has no such option, nor does it stay running. The specs are:

Case: AOpen H340 slimline case

PSU: 400W EZ-Cool TFX Power supply

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Q35M-S2

BIOS Revision: F7 (latest)

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 6320 1.86GHz

RAM: IGB GEiL DDR2 667

HDD: Western Digital 80GB SATA

Optical: Samsung SH-D163 IDE DVD-ROM drive

I've tried different power supplies, so I know it isn't that, and my 400W one has the 24pin & 8pin ATX connectors, so it has more than enough juice to power this system. It seems to be doing some sort of power test, but none of the computers I've ever built in the past (1000+ of them) have exhibited this symptom, and sooner or later the hard drive is going to be the first to be damaged with it keep firing up then clanking to a stop.

Anyone else with this board having the same issue?

[Dark Mantis]

Sounds nasty Try clearing the CMOS and then loading the BIOS optimised defaults. It could be to do with the old hardware.

[Tidosho]

Sounds nasty Try clearing the CMOS and then loading the BIOS optimised defaults. It could be to do with the old hardware.

Thanks for that, Dark Mantis. I did try it several times with different power supplies, but the problem still occurs. I even cleared the ESCD data in the BIOS. My eBay seller is contacting another of his buyers who bought the same board as me to see if he is having the same issue, so he may end up here, too....

I don't really want to try downflashing the BIOS as the previous one had a constant reboot problem according to some users. If no-one else here can help I'll open a support ticket and get a Gigabyte engineer to take a look.

[Dark Mantis]

Have you got the BIOS set to "quick boot" if so try disabling that and let it check the memory etc properly. I have had a few instances like this that were down to incompatible memory.

[Tidosho]

I tried that yesterday. I've reset the BIOS, fiddled about with things. It can't be incompatible memory, otherwise my system wouldn't boot as normal once this power on thing finished. The memory is listed as compatible. Like I said, she's perfect otherwise.

Unless someone with the same board and the same problem comes along, I'm going to issue a support ticket, because it isn't normal.

[Dark Mantis]

By all means put in a ticket to GGTS and see if they can help. It's just the length of time it takes them to respond to your query. I know your memory is compatible but that doesn't mean it's all running ok. You could run Memtest86+ on each module individually if you want to be sure.

[Tidosho]

My seller hasn't got back to me on eBay, but it's not really his fault. He didn't notice it, as the server the board was in at his datacentre was running 24/7. Having fiddled and run Memtest (the RAM is brand new) with no solution or errors, I've come to the conclusion that it might be a VRM/ITE I/O chip problem, or a design/BIOS fault.

I just need someone else with the Q35 board to see if theirs does it, otherwise GBT will just claim it's either isolated, or ignore it completely. If they do that, I'll be upset, as I've sold and worshipped their products for years, they're the most reliable I've ever used.

[bratt]

I'm a GA-Q35M-S2 owner and experience the same issue.  Did you find a solution?