Special Request: Try to Boot FX without RAM

I guess I am as impatient as hell, but I bought a "bad" GX-N10 (P-79XX) board that I just gave the heat gun treatment and I want to see if I have had any luck.

I bought a stick of 1333 4G RAM and it booted into windows before I did the heat gun job on it (with tons of graphics errors). It would post, get pissed there was no CMOS battery, etc. But it only booted into windows once showing ANYTHING on the display (VGA port, because I am a retard and broke the LCD cable). Hence my heat gun treatment.

That being said, I returned the RAM to Fry's cause I truly wanted 2 x 2GB sticks of 1066 RAM instead of one 4GB chip.

Long story short, I am getting no video at all and no post beeps or anything even with the CMOS battery (eBay) in now that I don't have RAM. My new sticks are on order and will be here Monday.

Can someone confirm that if they take their RAM out the computer doesn't do crap?

 

no ram = no boot................

 

Well, with ram = no boot in my case.

It turns on, both fans run, CPU fan continues running for about 10 seconds, then the whole board powers on and then off, on then off, on then off.

Boo.

 

Well the P79 boards have a 260m Video card. None of them to my knowledge had the solder issue requiring the heat gun. If this is what you were trying to cure that may actually be your issue.

Most likely the system is bad from someone overclocking the system for too long and burnt out the video. The video cad may then have even been hurt futher by the heat gun. The other problem is the solder that the baking trick worked on had a lower teperature threshold. The good solder on the 260m at those same temps my actually have created cold sloder joints at those same locations.

So higher heat may fix the GPU but also at the same time damage other components................................

 

Since I had no idea what was wrong with this board to begin with I had to start somewhere. It was the board sitting on eBay for months.

I did manage to get it to post last week and got video through the external monitor (when I had RAM) that was exactly like what I got from my 8800GTM on the original board when it was the GPU that was failing. I know the heat gun trick risky, but I didn't have much to lose.

What was interesting was the bios beep codes I managed to get tonight after I installed some RAM I picked up off Craigslist.

2-3-2-3 Enable external and CPU caches
2-3-2-3 Configure advanced cache registers

Still no video. And it didn't boot into Windows so the Fn + F4 thing couldn't work.

Do you think this might be a case of the BIOS needing to be emergency recovered? I am willing to give it one more shot before harvesting the GPU and just committing to get a newer board.

 

Sounds more like a cpu initialization issue but could also be the ram or even GPU memory too............

 

Yeah...I am not thrilled about working on these damn things. I just burnt up another cable on the media bar because of the stupid ZIF connectors. Can't find those push in parts of the ZIFs to save your life. If I upgraded to a new one of these boards, I would have bought a 78 or 79 media bar setup anyway but still...

I would assume that if the board throws these codes, it won't boot anyway.

 

throwing those codes it definately will not boot. too bad as these are pretty nice machines. Especially if you got a 1920x1200 model..............

 

Yeah, I may swap my T5550 from my Sony in there and see if it is a CPU issue. I am betting not.

Here is the short story:
-Bought a P6831fx that had the GPU issue we all know about for $125 bucks
-I baked it 4 times successfully over a year and a half
-5th time, it was done.
-Decision made to look for a replacement board and steer away from the 8800
-Saw the GX-N10 board on eBay that had no description as to what was wrong with it
-Did the transplant, no boot
-Heated up the GPU with a heat gun, no boot
-Heated up the northbridge with a heat gun, no boot

Still throws the codes mentioned above. Me thinks this board is just dead. Not sure what way I am going to go now.