I have a problem with my pc that I think I've managed to narrow down to a motherboard fault, but would like opinions from more knowledgeable people. Sorry for the length of this post. I want to be thorough in explaining the fault and the lengths I've gone to to diagnose it.
I've had this PC for about 3.5 years with no problems. The last upgrade I did was the graphics card, about 18 months ago.
Specs:
Graphics card: MSI GTX970 G1 gaming
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87 GD-65 gaming
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670k
RAM: 2x8GB G.Skill ripjaws low profile
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
PSU: Corsair RM750
Recently, I turned on my PC, and although it started up, I got no signal on my monitors. Two of these are plugged into the graphics card, and one in the on-board VGA. None of them showed any signal. However, I hear the windows notification when it detects usb devices, indicating that it is indeed booting up, it's just not providing signal to the monitors.
After some troubleshooting, I discovered that it boots up fine if I take out the graphics card and plug two monitors into the motherboard. I thought it must be a problem with the graphics card, but I tried swapping the card with my girlfriend's (a GTX1050); her pc booted up fine with my graphics card in it, and mine didn't with hers in it.
Her card has no external power connectors, so I thought it was unlikely that my PSU was the problem, but I thought maybe if it wasn't supplying enough power through the PCI-e slots, that this might cause the problem, so to make sure, I swapped our power supplies. My PC (i.e., the one with my motherboard in it), still showed no signal on the monitors. From this, I know that my graphics card and PSU both work in her computer, so I put them back in mine, and took everything else out of my PC except for the cpu, just to see if it will post. Still no signal.
I tried putting my graphics card in a different PCI-e slot, to see if the slot itself was damaged, but still no luck. I can't test the third slot easily because there is no slot in the back of my case to fit it in the bottom PCI-e slot. I have a usb card in a 1x slot, which is working fine.
What I think is up: there is a fault with the motherboard that is causing multiple PCI-e slots to operate incorrectly.
I have looked at replacing the motherboard (it is outside warranty), but the options are less than ideal at the moment. The three places I usually parts from don't stock a lot of boards with the LGA1150 socket. In fact, I can only choose between two almost identical boards. It means I will end up with very little space for expansion, and they have fewer usb slots than I would like. I also won't be able to overclock.
If I knew that the motherboard was definitely faulty, I would bite the bullet and buy a new one, but I want to avoid spending the ~$100 when I'm not 100% sure.
So my questions are:
Is anyone familiar with this type of fault? Is it normal for a PCI-e fault to affect multiple slots? Is there any chance that a CPU fault could cause this? It's the only thing I haven't isolated from the system when testing, and I don't want to buy a new motherboard if there's a chance the cpu could cause this. If it's the motherboard, is it possible there would be a fix? I've tried both BIOS on the board, and I've tried resetting the bios, and also tried flashing the bios to the most recent version. Can anyone think of any other possible causes? Maybe I'm missing something.
Thanks in advance for any help.
I've had this PC for about 3.5 years with no problems. The last upgrade I did was the graphics card, about 18 months ago.
Specs:
Graphics card: MSI GTX970 G1 gaming
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87 GD-65 gaming
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670k
RAM: 2x8GB G.Skill ripjaws low profile
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
PSU: Corsair RM750
Recently, I turned on my PC, and although it started up, I got no signal on my monitors. Two of these are plugged into the graphics card, and one in the on-board VGA. None of them showed any signal. However, I hear the windows notification when it detects usb devices, indicating that it is indeed booting up, it's just not providing signal to the monitors.
After some troubleshooting, I discovered that it boots up fine if I take out the graphics card and plug two monitors into the motherboard. I thought it must be a problem with the graphics card, but I tried swapping the card with my girlfriend's (a GTX1050); her pc booted up fine with my graphics card in it, and mine didn't with hers in it.
Her card has no external power connectors, so I thought it was unlikely that my PSU was the problem, but I thought maybe if it wasn't supplying enough power through the PCI-e slots, that this might cause the problem, so to make sure, I swapped our power supplies. My PC (i.e., the one with my motherboard in it), still showed no signal on the monitors. From this, I know that my graphics card and PSU both work in her computer, so I put them back in mine, and took everything else out of my PC except for the cpu, just to see if it will post. Still no signal.
I tried putting my graphics card in a different PCI-e slot, to see if the slot itself was damaged, but still no luck. I can't test the third slot easily because there is no slot in the back of my case to fit it in the bottom PCI-e slot. I have a usb card in a 1x slot, which is working fine.
What I think is up: there is a fault with the motherboard that is causing multiple PCI-e slots to operate incorrectly.
I have looked at replacing the motherboard (it is outside warranty), but the options are less than ideal at the moment. The three places I usually parts from don't stock a lot of boards with the LGA1150 socket. In fact, I can only choose between two almost identical boards. It means I will end up with very little space for expansion, and they have fewer usb slots than I would like. I also won't be able to overclock.
If I knew that the motherboard was definitely faulty, I would bite the bullet and buy a new one, but I want to avoid spending the ~$100 when I'm not 100% sure.
So my questions are:
Is anyone familiar with this type of fault? Is it normal for a PCI-e fault to affect multiple slots? Is there any chance that a CPU fault could cause this? It's the only thing I haven't isolated from the system when testing, and I don't want to buy a new motherboard if there's a chance the cpu could cause this. If it's the motherboard, is it possible there would be a fix? I've tried both BIOS on the board, and I've tried resetting the bios, and also tried flashing the bios to the most recent version. Can anyone think of any other possible causes? Maybe I'm missing something.
Thanks in advance for any help.