ECS Motherboard back from the dead!

tomsolomon

This is bugging me. Has been for a couple of days. I had an ECS motherboard that was non responsive. No POST nothing. I removed it from the case to replace it and left it on the side. Guess what? The new board was exactly the same. I gave up and left it there for a day and just went back to it. I bench tested the motherboard with just the PSU FP power switch and a stick of memory and nothing. I pulled the memory stick and hit the power switch and out came the obligatory beeps from the system speaker telling me the memory was not installed, so I plugged the memory back in and it booted first time.

Like what!!!

I have checked the case for out of place mounting points, loose screws and anything else that could have caused a short. I plugged everything back in that should be plugged in, optical drive, HDD etc. and the thing still boots up. The only thing I have left off so far are the reset switch, HDD LED and PWR LED. Not that it could be one of those that caused the problem.

I'm thinking that maybe the memory is tied to some sort of over voltage or temperature cut off, controlled by the memory and the act of switching the system on with the memory removed has reset it somehow. But that sounds implausible.

Either that or it's an intermittent fault with the motherboard. Unless anybody else has another theory.

tomsolomon

I'm beginning to think this is a PSU problem. ie the PSU isn't powerful enough.