One Day Old Gigabyte GA-Z87MX-D3H Shut Down During Mavericks Installation - Won't Restart

[Pandorica]

Hello all,

Sorry for the lengthy title. As of posting, I completed my first Hackintosh build yesterday - all components were recognized and I could boot to BIOS. Yesterday afternoon I began a Mavericks installation with UniBeast. All was well up until the installation reached the "23 minutes remaining" mark. At that point, the computer shut itself off. When attempting to reboot, the fans power up for anywhere from 20 seconds and 1 second, and then shut down.

Does anyone have any idea what could have gone wrong?

I've removed graphics card, all but one stick of ram, both HDD and SSD, WiFi card, triple-checked mobo standoffs to make sure nothing was being shorted, removing CMOS battery, and unplugged everything from the power supply.

I can only think that it's a faulty PSU or motherboard. What's strange is that it was working so well, and randomly powered itself off.

Thank you for any help you can provide!

Specs:

Intel Quad-Core i7 4770k
Nvidia GeForce 2gb GTX 770 Gigabyte Windforce OC
Gigabyte GA-Z87MX-D3H
16gb Crucial Ballistix Sport VLP
TP-Link N800 wireless adapter
Kingston SSDNow V300 120gb
Seagate Barracuda 3tb HDD
Corsair CX600M 600W Power Supply
Corsair 350D mATX Chassis

 

[P1LGRIM]

I would try clearing the CMOS settings - Either with the motherboard pins or remove the battery for a short while.

Connect a speaker to see if there are any 'Beeps' that might give a clue.


Good Luck

 

[Pandorica]

Thank you for the quick response!

I actually did try removing the battery to no avail. Will try a speaker.

 

[P1LGRIM]

Will try a speaker.

Beep code interpretation : Link

Good Luck

 

[Pandorica]

Hello,

New developments - I retried your suggestion of removing the battery, however this time for a much longer time. To my surprise, the system powered up into BIOS without a hitch. Set BIOS to defaults, drives to AHCI, and made a brand new Mavericks install USB to start fresh.

I booted up onto the drive, got the Chimera bootscreen, launched the installer, and the computer hung on the Apple logo for ten minutes. The front power and I/O buttons had become unresponsive despite their headers being plugged in, so I cut power to the computer from the PSU switch.

I tried it again, this time with the bootflag "-x." Still hung on the Apple logo.

Tried again with boogflag "GraphicsEnabler=No," (I heard from another gentleman on Tonymac that it was best to install Unibeast w/out peripherals and PCIe cards, so my GTX 770 was disconnected.) and that hung as well.

I tried a few more bootflags, including verbose mode, which gave me an odd error message stating that my CPU (Intel Core i7 4770K) was unrecognized or incompatible.

From there, the computer shut itself off, as if someone had cut power to it. When attempting to power it back on, all fans (case fans, CPU fan, PSU fan) spun at full speed, and the computer shut off again without POSTing or sending a signal to the BIOS. I removed the CMOS battery again for about 20 minutes, and the computer started right back up again into BIOS. Good as new.

I have no idea what is going on? Seems like UniBeast is screwing up my components or BIOS temporarily, which is why I've been thinking my parts are faulty. However this CMOS reset has fixed the problem twice now. Perhaps I should put my graphics card and wireless adapter back in a try another install w/ no bootflags?

Could it just be UniBeast?

Thank you for any help you can provide!

 

[P1LGRIM]

Perhaps you forgot to disconnect the power lead when you removed the battery the first time.

Remove the graphics card and wireless card.

Set BIOS to optimised defaults.

Boot with -v -x GraphicsEnabler=Yes maxmem=4096

If it hangs, post a picture of the screen.


Good Luck

 

[Pandorica]

Thanks - will try later today. I have 2x8gb sticks of 1600mhz RAM. Only one installed currently, as I've been told it should be during installation. Leave as is?

 

[P1LGRIM]

Yes that's fine - Just make sure it's in the slot specified in your motherboard manual for a single stick.


Good Luck

 

[Pandorica]

Tried the computer. Won't even boot to BIOS. I'd left the CMOS battery out all day and left PSU unplugged to give it ample time to reset.

Popped battery back in hoping it would work, fans spun for a fraction of a second, and shut off. Tried again and they spun full speed for ten seconds and shut off. No signal being sent to the monitor.

This is getting frustrating.

 

[Pandorica]

P1LGRIM has been incredibly helpful so far - is there anybody else that could offer an opinion?

I really need to get this computer up and running.

Thanks!