Rampage IV Gene (mATX) suddenly failing

[stereopixels]

I've had my IV Gene for getting on for a couple of months now, running just fine, mainly use it for games. Yesterday I left it on for a while and went away to do something else. When I returned the PC was off... we hadn't had any power failures and it's protected by a surge strip, plus the other PC I had hooked up in the same room was still running okay. I turned my PC back on, started to boot to Windows, then just powered off. Tried again - this time got as far as the "Hit DEL for bios" red ASUS logo screen, dies again. Power it back on once more, CPU fans start turning, this time goes off again without even a chance for the monitor to come on. Tried it again a few hours later and it started throwing a BIOS error - "CPU fan error!", then a few moments later, powers off again. so I swap the CPU fan with another new one of the same type and try again - same error, dies again.

For info my build is:
- WD Caviar Black 500GB HDD
- i7 3820 CPU with Noctua NH-D14 cooler (two fans - one plugged into CPU, one into OPT CPU, both fans 4 pin)
- Corsair Force GT 90GB SSD
- GeForce 460GT PCI-E GPU
- 850W power Corsair PSU
- 2 x 2GB Kingston 1333
- NO overclocks or auto overclocks on anything - I hadn't got round to OCing the system at all yet so it's running stock

I have tried the following to identify my issue without success:
- Swapped out the power supply for a 1000W supply I use in my server and know works
- Taken off the CPU cooler, cleaned off the grease and reapplied it, reseated the CPU, tried a stock cooler
- Tried one stick of RAM in every slot - both the existing type I had in it and also some generic 1366 DDR3 RAM
- Unplugged EVERYTHING except CPU + RAM + PSU (still died at same speed though)
- Reset the CMOS using the button on the back (wasn't sure about how long needed to hold down though so held it down for 10 secs)
- Left the PC unplugged for 12 hours without the battery on the board
- Tested the GPU, drives, PSU and RAM in another machine all work okay.
- Using ROG Connect I've looked for a specific POST code, but the failure seems to happen at random codes, sometimes fails whilst initialising CPU, other times gets past that and is checking memory, loading ROM, message display (to tell me about the fan error).

I've pretty much exhausted every option I can think of, so now I'm stuck... what has happened to my PC!? I've noticed that the longer I leave between trying the PC again seems to have some correlation to how long it will survive in seconds when I power it on - leaving it for ten minutes gave it enough time to power the monitor on, trying it immediately after it powers off usually results in it dying immediately. This sounds like an RMA job to me, but I don't know whether it's the board at fault (I suspect it is because of the weird CPU fan errors etc it's suddenly throwing) or the CPU itself?

Any guidance or help appreciated.

[stereopixels]

So I just managed to boot the PC and it stayed on long enough for me to get into the EFI bios... ran straight to the temperatures page and it says board is running at 31c, CPU is at 54c, and another sensor at 29c... (couldn't see what it was, it died again) so whilst this has the tell-tale signs of an overheating component, the sensor readings say otherwise... still stuck 😞

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Hey there! :)Sorry to hear that! 😞 Have you tried disconnecting the power, taking the battery out for a while and clearing CMOS ? Does that board have two bios chips? if so you could swap the bios or even reflash the one you have. Also look carefully at the VRM and capacitors etc to check the board is OK.

[stereopixels]

Hi Arne, thanks for the reply. As I mentioned I have tried taking the battery out and leaving the machine unplugged for 12 hours, and also pressing the clear CMOS button. A brief check of all the caps on the board doesn't suggest anything untoward regarding those... I did pay a fair amount of attention to the caps round the CPU socket because that's where a lot of the heat will be but they all appeared fine. I have one BIOS on this board (afaik) but I don't think I can reflash it because the PC won't stay on for any time in order to do that... it just dies whenever it feels like it somewhere between 3 and 20 seconds after power on.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Sorry, I did read your post, honest, but missed you'd tried that!

You should still be able to reflash: http://event.asus.com/2012/mb/USB_BIOS_Flashback_GUIDE/

Have you tried pressing the mem ok button?

I can't think of anything else you haven't done!

[Zka17]

What the Debug LEDs are showing? And the Q-LED?

[stereopixels]

Okay so I tried flashing the BIOS to the latest version (RAMPAGE IV GENE BIOS 1404), powered on after it finished (did it via USB ROG connect) and now my main system power light won't come on but everything else powers up still.. inc monitor.

Debug LEDs go through CPU then RAM, then VGA... of course it depends how long the PC actually stays on for which determines which of these LEDs is the last to go on, though as it shuts off each time it ever so briefly flashes the CPU one. For the POST Q-LEDs/ROG connect POST monitor, same thing - it can stop at any of them and it seems to cycle through them all relatively quickly and stop on any at random, so there's no clear culprit code that shows up each time just whatever code the PC gets to before it decides to die.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Hmmm seems like the board is on the blink ! 😞

[stereopixels]

I think we're past blinking stage and into full death tbh... now when I turn it on it stays on for circa 3 seconds every time then just goes off completely! If I RMA will they expect me to flash back to the firmware it came with before I send it?

[8_Pack]

What is the q code led when it stops posting. ie where does it get stuck??? or where does it shut down.