Yoha,

Long story short- I'm building a new PC for my brother and I went out and bought all the parts today. I'm assembling and when I do the smoke test the PC suffers from a continual loops of pre-POST restarts- the system will boot up for a split-second before switching off for a few seconds and it will continue to rinse-repeat.

Long story short- I narrowed it down to the RAM. The motherboard doesn't support it. It's Dual Channel DDR3, I tried both the blue/white and it still had the same problem. I'm going to go back and pick up one of the known supported brands but there's only one thing that concerns me. When I ran the test to see what would happen without any RAM, the exact same thing happened. That leads me to think that there might be a smidgen of a possibility that it could be a Motherboard problem. Everything tells me the opposite but I can't shake the feeling that the motherboard is to blame.

Advice?


Motherboard: GA-P55M-UD2

CPU: i3 something or other (I double-checked that this CPU supports dual-channel RAM, as I know that the i5 and i7 don't)

Memory: Corsair DDR3-1333 CMV4GX3M2A1333C9

Proposed RAM Change: Corsair DDR3-1600 [FONT=verdana,arial,sans-serif]CMX4GX3M2A1600C90 which, according to the website, should be supported
[/FONT]

 

The problem is most likely the RAM. If your RAM speed (DDR3-1333 vs. DDR3-1600 is a big difference) is less than the motherboard wants, it wont likely recognize that there is any RAM installed - thus your pre-POST restarts with or without RAM. Computers just aren't made to run without RAM anymore, and likely wont be rid of that bottleneck for a very long time.

 

Alright, this is too weird. I've been having the same problem for about 6 months now. The only difference in mine is that I have red cpu_led light on my motherboard, and it does occasionally boot up. Has yours ever worked, or not at all? I think mine has to be a short somewhere in the MoBo, could it be that for yours as well?

CPU: i5
MoBo: ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3

 

Militis: Yeah, thought it was the board. It's not the speed of the RAM that's not supported, it's the actual brand/type that's conflicting with the motherboard. I'm going back to the shop tomorrow and exchanging it for one that is- I have all the serials and everything.

Elvin- Mine's never worked at all. I've never had it go past POST, let alone get it to install anything. I doubt that mone is a mboard problem, although yours might be. Try disabling everything except for the CPU, RAM and the power-cable to turn the motherboard on. If you're still having problems then it's gotta be one of the 3- CPU, mboard or RAM. Test another CPU and RAM If you can. If you can't, well, RAM tends to have more problems than motherboards or CPUs (im my personal expierence, I can't ever think of where a CPU didn't work).

 

If motherboard does not support the RAM... Dont use that RAM. Once you get it with the correct ram connect the bare minimums. Use the intergrated video port on the mobo if its there. This way you eliminate a vid card compab issue.

Quite possibly it could also be a mobo that is not made right. If its still under warranty send it back.