Machine suddenly died...

[ralphonz]

Hi,

So after working flawlessly for years on end, my machine suddenly decided it wasn't going to boot anymore. When I went to turn it off last night it was somehow completely unresponsive. I believe it was in the process of downloading the 10.13.4 update from the app store. Although there was power to the machine, there was no signal to the monitors. I need to get to bed so I just turned it off by holding the power switch.

Now, as of the morning I have a constantly lit DRAM LED on the ASUS P8P67-M. To be honest this light could have always been on and I wouldn't have noticed, I have a good feeling it never used to be on except briefly at start up but let's not trust in feelings.

No matter what I do I cannot get it to POST. Things I have tried:

- I've tried resetting the CMOS, both by using the jumpers as described in the manual and by removing the battery for a few minutes.

- I've tried removing all but one of the RAM sticks, manual states that it doesn't matter which slot you use if only use a "single-channel memory configuration". Unfortunately the CPU heatsink is in the way of the last one so I haven't tested each stick in turn.

- I've cleaned the whole thing out, checked all cables and connections are secure. Nothing has been changed in the machine for years, It's in a very safe place in the studio and doesn't ever get moved.

- Removing all HD and SSD and turning on

The strangest thing is the MemOK. The manual says to hold to switch down until the DRAM LED starts blinking, however, as soon as I touch the MemOK switch the whole machine cuts the power then restarts with the same constantly lit DRAM LED. If I hold the switch down all that happens is a repeated power-up-power-down cycle, the DRAM light never starts blinking. Must have tried this a million times.

What's the next step? Like I said the machine has been working better than ok for years, MB was purchased in 2012 along with the RAM. A few years ago it got an SSD and a fanless PSU and fanless heat-sink for the graphics card as I use it in the music studio i needed it to be quiet. Has worked with no problems for the last two or three years then suddenly this...

CPU: Intel i5
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67-M B3
Ram: Corsair XMS3 1600 4x 8GB
SSD/HDD: Samsung EVO 850, 2x WD Caviar Blue 1TB
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5770
PSU: Seasonic Platinum Fanless Series 520W
Chassis: Themaltake V3
OS: Mac OSX 10.13.3

 

[trs96]

It looks like your Asus board may be EOL. You do have the option of moving your CPU/Ram/Drives/GC and PSU into a Dell 9010.
These are extremely well built and easy to hackintosh, proabably easier than your old P8P67 motherboard was. The Dell is actually new and never used so all capacitors should be perfect. Check it out and see if it might work for you.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-DELL-O...853820?hash=item36277ec6bc:g:7JgAAOSwIVhZ8KMb

Here is the UK Ebay link:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-DELL...853820?hash=item36277ec6bc:g:7JgAAOSwIVhZ8KMb

 

[ralphonz]

It looks like your Asus board may be EOL. You do have the option of moving your CPU/Ram/Drives/GC and PSU into a Dell 9010.
These are extremely well built and easy to hackintosh, proabably easier than your old P8P67 motherboard was. The Dell is actually new and never used so all capacitors should be perfect. Check it out and see if it might work for you.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-DELL-O...853820?hash=item36277ec6bc:g:7JgAAOSwIVhZ8KMb

Here is the UK Ebay link:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-DELL...853820?hash=item36277ec6bc:g:7JgAAOSwIVhZ8KMb

Thanks for the suggestion. I used to have a hacked DELL laptop, back on tiger 10.4! After the hardware went kaput and I opened it up I swore I'd never waste money on another DELL ever again. I need to know it's definitely dead before I spend any cash too.

 

[trs96]

Thanks for the suggestion. I used to have a hacked DELL laptop, back on tiger 10.4! After the hardware went kaput and I opened it up I swore I'd never waste money on another DELL ever again. I need to know it's definitely dead before I spend any cash too.

The Dell and HP business desktops are built much better and are more reliable than their consumer lines. Probably more than 10,000 people are using the HP 8300 desktop model and have reported very few hardware issues when using it as a hackintosh.