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Hackintosh system boots for 5s and then cuts the power. Totally stumped!

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Joined
Nov 25, 2012
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156
Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UP5-TH
CPU
i5-3570K
Graphics
AMD RX570
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. Android
So I went to turn on my machine the other day and it turned on first time and booted to the OS. I shut it down the same evening and when I went to turn it on again I couldn't get it to boot at all and haven't been able to do so since.


Basically it boots up for about 3-5 seconds and then the power cuts out and the only way to turn it on or off again is via the switch on the back of the PSU. My motherboard has an onboard power switch but this doesn't seem to work at all and neither does the case power switch.


For ref my machine is as follows.



  • Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core
  • Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H ATX LGA1155
  • Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing
  • Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600
  • MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB
  • Corsair 650HX
  • Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" SSD
  • Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB 3.5" 5900RPM
  • TP-Link TL-WDN4800 802.11a/b/g/n PCI-Express x1
  • Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower





To try and troubleshoot the issue I've been through the booting error post. But still no luck.


I've removed the GFX card, wifi pice card and HDDs and left just one stick of RAM in and still no luck.


I removed the motherboard from the case and bread boarded it to make sure the case wasn't causing a short. Still the system won't boot out of the case with only the CPU and heatsink attached either with or without any RAM.


Suspecting it might be the PSU I've tested it with a jumper paper clip between the green and black wires. I've attached a fan to the PSU whilst doing this. The PSU powers up and the fan on it spins for about 5 s and then spins down. The attached fan though spins consistently. I suspect the PSU fan only spins at first because its a Gold rated almost fanless PSU. So apart from a load spike at the point of it being turned on there no need for the PSU fan to be running. Is this a correct thing to presume?


I'm yet to find a PSU I can borrow to rule that the PSU is the issue any further than the jumper wire test.


My motherboard has an led display to give out debug codes at boot. What's odd is every time I flip the switch on the PSU (the only way of getting the machine to even start) the LED board reads out db. I've checked in the Gigabyte motherboard manual which says it means:


DB: Flash update is failed.
Though I've not updated my BIOS as far as I'm aware.

However if I flip the CMOS battery out for a minute or so the machine will boot a couple of seconds later giving the following codes in this order:


15 Pre-memory North-Bridge initialization is started.

36 CPU PEI initialization.

4F Reserved.



After it goes through this process once (I flip the power on the PSU off and on again) then the motherboard LED screen reads out db again.


In case it helps any further the motherboard also has a CMOS-Clear physical switch and jumper pins on the board but neither of these seem to reset or cause a different boot procedure error to db like flipping the battery out does.


There's also a switch for a backup BIOS on the motherboard which I have tried in both position but this doesn't seem to make any difference.


Basically I'm totally stumped on what's causing the errors and inability to boot the system. As far as I'm aware I didn't update anything recently on the system.
 
Anyone have the faintest idea about this problem? I have a similar problem, different hardware.

I have a GA-Q77M-D2H and an intel i5 3570K. 16gb of ram, stock hd 4000 gpu. System and apps run on a sandisk 64 GB ssd, and my home folder is on a Seagate 2 tb hd. I run 10.8.4, no additional PCI cards. Networking is through the onboard LAN card.


Went to start up this morning; system fan twirled for a moment, then the whole system just stopped.
Pressed the on button a couple of times, same result - fan spins then nothing. Put a screwdriver across the CMOS reset jumper, pulled the CMOS backup battery; nothing. Nothing even on the monitor, not even a little flash. I don't even hear that little PC only "beep". I installed most of this hardware on Sept 24th replacing a previous system. Everything was running great until this morning.

So, I reinstalled all my old hardware and........
Starts right up. Go figure. Amazon is allowing me to return all of the hardware for a full refund luckily.

So I'm getting a Z87M-D3H and an i5-4670K instead. Added an EVGA GTX 650 for good measure, plus 500 watt power supply. X my fingers.
 
I'm still yet to find a solution to this problem with my hackintosh. I'm gonna try and multimetre test the PSU later today to see if that can identify if the PSU is the issue or not.

itry2hide, when you said you tried to swap out your hardware to your old build, did you try swapping out each component at a time to see if that helped to indetify where the problem component may lie?
 
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