dead motherboard, second opinions apreciated.

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so this weekend my pc decided to burn out its motherboard, first it refused to boot, simply went through post and crashed uppon starting to load the os.

so i tried a recovery live cd i usually use, this includes a partition manager and some other tools.
however when i started it up with the cd nothing happened, my power supply threw its short circuit alarm, the fans would kick in for half a sec and then nothign.

second thing i tried was checking for any obvious shorts, i usually do some cable management though so there isnt many loose wires to get caught, after that revealed nothing suspicious i then tried testing the psu on my old work desktop, booted fine, no alarms and all the voltages were normal, unfortunately the cpu power cable from the other desktop doesnt have the 8 oin conector so i couldnt cross test.

after that i decided to strip all modules and move the motherboard to my workbench, had it under my magnifying glass for any visible damage, none were found, or it was obscured by heatsinks.

i then tested with each of the 4 ram modules in turn, again they cannot be cross tested, ddr2/3.

conclusion, dead motherboard.

or is there anything i have missed?

things i havent tried:
x another cpu
x another power supply
x other ram

problem is with those the mb should be able to post and at least give me a bbeep code.
the mb is only 4 months old and a midrange model, something that kind of irks me as usually a mb is DOA or it dies during the first few weeks.

If you can get past bios, but not into your OS (Windows?) and you get BSOD then it's most likely RAM failure. 4 sticks, huh? What do you have? 16GB of RAM?

no as stated in step 2 there is not even a post, no beep codes either, it doesnt even get to that stage,

and no only 8, Geill ripsaw.

DDR2? What processor?

It might be far easier to snag a new board for a song and reuse your old parts. $50 well spent.

sorry for the ambiguity the different function and form factors of ddr2 vs ddr3 makes it impossible for me to cross check my ram modules in another machine.

the specs are:

intel i5 2500k
gigabyte ga-z68x-ud3h(mb)
4x2 ggb geill ripsaw ddr3
amd radeon hd6950(unocked)

Sounds similar to what my PC did when my hard drive died completely. I replaced my hard drive with one that was 1 Terabyte and reinstalled windows my PC has been great since.

I thought it was my motherboard too - glad it turned out not to be. Good luck!

already checked,
besides, it cant post, drive detection happens after that.

-Video card?

-Dead cmos battery

-Loose cpu heatsink/ cpu fan broken or not connected?

-knocked a capacitor loose when changing stuff?

-Bios jumper still in place?

If you're not getting a POST then it almost certainly points to the board itself being dead. What's odd is that it went to it's final resting place in stages--allowing a partial boot until the end. Last time I dealt with a gone board it simply quit--no warning. It would be pure guesswork (from here anyway) at this point--fortunately they are rather cheaply had these days. I am assuming you were never in a serious under/over-volt situation...

Likely unrelated to your core issue, but easy enough to check:

Have you removed or replaced your USB peripherals? I've seen some very unsual behavior out of those critters. Particularly, I've seen several cases in which shorted KBs caused inconsistent POST issues.

The good news is there's inexpensive 1155 boards out there, but many have 3-year warranties and you might still be covered!

Check if you can get a warranty replacement!

the bios jumper has never been used and the battery would still allow booting at default values.

i just checked the cpu for bent pins and the heatsink for contact, no issues there either.

a dead vga would still allow a post to beep codes.

and since i have at my workdesk there is literally nothing connected.

nubbins, have you had any boards die for no apparant reason some 3-6 months into their life?

i agree its very weird, initially i had the same suspicion as valkyrie2012, dead hard drive, then it struck e, there was no post, no nothing.
the mb has diag leds but they arent lighting up at all,


well thank you for your suggestions everyone.
the board will be shipped to RMA, see what they say.

I feel your pain. My main computer is still down with a bad mother board. I'm hoping to get a replacement in a few weeks.

It does sound like a dead mobo to me.

One thing though, you can plug a 4-pin motherboard power connector into an 8-pin connector (it only fits into one of the halves) and it should always boot (unless the PSU is simply underpowered). I did this with a motherboard I bought for my mother without fully checking the plug compatibility.

Another thing you could have tried is the Gigabyte 'BIOS restore' function where it copies from the backup. Having never used it I'm not sure how to trigger it, or if the mobo has to at least POST for it to even try to work, though.

nice to know, i probaby should have tried that, unfortunately it has been sent to the dealer for a warranty replacement.
since i buy quite a lot there it shouldnt be a big problem, have had a couple of cases where i had the replacement after 3 days.

my enermax galaxy psu's short circuit alarm tripped though so i would have probably risked damaging something had i run power through it.

the bios restore feature(you can keep 4 seperate copies of bios settings in non volatile memory) is an onscreen feature, all you can do without a post is trying to reset cmos and keep the battery out for an hour or two.