The inevitable "I tried and it's not working" support thread

RedXIV

Hey Guys,

So all my parts finally arrived and I gave it a shot at putting it together tonight. Very new to this but don't think i made too much of a mess at it.

So was a little disappointed to realise that when I turn the machine on, the leds and fans all turn on but that's it. About 10 seconds later it'll turn off, wait a second or 2, turn back on and then sit there doing nothing again.

I'm wrecked so I haven't done too much in the way of debugging yet but I've tried moving the RAM around, and double checked all of the PSU connectors.

I believe they are fine. I didn't check the build out of the case which was probably a stupid move so will probably start with that tomorrow but in the mean time, if anyone has any tips or advice, I'd appreciate any help offered at all!

My Build is as follows:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($339.22 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170 Pro4S ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($99.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($119.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($93.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Video Card ($409.30 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair SPEC-02 ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-04-10 20:39 EDT-0400

Cheers,
Red

wotzgoingon

That's a Skylake motherboard. So maybe it needs a Skylake CPU to update the bios to accept Kaby Lake CPU.

wotzgoingon

I found this it needs a P7.30 bios to accept a i7 7700K

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z170%20Pro4S/index.us.asp?cat=CPU

RedXIV

After months of careful planning! To be caught on a whim of upgrading from an i7-6700k to i7-7700k! Rats.

Am I going to be cheaper buying a new motherboard here? It looks like I need a compatible CPU to be able to update the BIOS and I don't have any other than the one I just bought?

Thanks for the catch!

Jo Satan

There is a guy on adverts selling an Intel Pentium G4400 for €60
He bought it for the same reason you need it, just to update his skylake board.
Perhaps you can come to an arrangement with him.

http://www.adverts.ie/processors/intel-pentium-g4400/12635899

Lu Tze

RedXIV wrote: »

After months of careful planning! To be caught on a whim of upgrading from an i7-6700k to i7-7700k! Rats.

Am I going to be cheaper buying a new motherboard here? It looks like I need a compatible CPU to be able to update the BIOS and I don't have any other than the one I just bought?

Thanks for the catch!

Probably cheaper to buy a celeron g3900 or similar, whatever the cheapest skylake processor is - probably about €50. Unless some kind soul has a chip you could borrow?

RedXIV

Jo Satan wrote: »

There is a guy on adverts selling an Intel Pentium G4400 for €60
He bought it for the same reason you need it, just to update his skylake board.
Perhaps you can come to an arrangement with him.

http://www.adverts.ie/processors/intel-pentium-g4400/12635899

Thanks for that! Out of curiosity, how do I find out which version of the BIOS is on my Motherboard? Do I Just assume 1.0?

Just as the link wotzgoingon posted shows a specific BIOS version for that CPU also?

wotzgoingon

Jo Satan wrote: »

There is a guy on adverts selling an Intel Pentium G4400 for €60
He bought it for the same reason you need it, just to update his skylake board.
Perhaps you can come to an arrangement with him.

http://www.adverts.ie/processors/intel-pentium-g4400/12635899

Lu Tze wrote: »

Probably cheaper to buy a celeron g3900 or similar, whatever the cheapest skylake processor is - probably about €50. Unless some kind soul has a chip you could borrow?

According to that list of supporting chips I linked both of those CPU's you both listed do not work out of the box. They need newer bios' to work. So pointless buying them and finding out it will not work.

OP your best bet is to find someone with a supporting CPU and ask for a lend. I seen a few threads on here in the past few weeks where someone was looking for a skylake CPU to update their bios.

RedXIV

wotzgoingon wrote: »

According to that list of supporting chips I linked both of those CPU's you both listed do not work out of the box. They need newer bios' to work. So pointless buying them and finding out it will not work.

OP your best bet is to find someone with a supporting CPU and ask for a lend. I seen a few threads on here in the past few weeks where someone was looking for a skylake CPU to update their bios.

So from the table you linked to, it sounds like I need one of the following:
Socket Family Number Core Frequency BCLK Cache Power Since BIOS
1151 Core i7 i7-6700K(R0) Skylake S 4.0GHz BCLK 100MHz 8MB 91W All
1151 Core i7 i7-6700(R0) Skylake S 3.4GHz BCLK 100MHz 8MB 65W All
1151 Core i7 i7-6700T(R0) Skylake S 2.8GHz BCLK 100MHz 8MB 35W All
1151 Core i5 i5-6600K(R0) Skylake S 3.5GHz BCLK 100MHz 6MB 91W All
1151 Core i5 i5-6600(R0) Skylake S 3.3GHz BCLK 100MHz 6MB 65W All
1151 Core i5 i5-6600T(R0) Skylake S 2.7GHz BCLK 100MHz 6MB 35W All
1151 Core i5 i5-6500(R0) Skylake S 3.2GHz BCLK 100MHz 6MB 65W All
1151 Core i5 i5-6500T(R0) Skylake S 2.5GHz BCLK 100MHz 6MB 35W All
1151 Core i5 i5-6400(R0) Skylake S 2.7GHz BCLK 100MHz 6MB 65W All
1151 Core i5 i5-6400T(R0) Skylake S 2.2GHz BCLK 100MHz 6MB 35W All

All the others require some form of update to the BIOS?

Mickeroo

Might seem like a stupid obvious suggestion but what port have you the monitor connected to? And have you tried all the ports on the GPU?

RedXIV

Mickeroo wrote: »

Might seem like a stupid obvious suggestion but what port have you the monitor connected to? And have you tried all the ports on the GPU?

HDMI connector on the motherboard is connected to the TV for the time being Haven't tried the GPU ports at all yet

Mickeroo

RedXIV wrote: »

HDMI connector on the motherboard is connected to the TV for the time being Haven't tried the GPU ports at all yet

If the GPU is installed then that's where you should be connected to I think, I made the same mistake on my build a few weeks ago and thought something was wrong. Everything seemed to cycle fine until the boot LED which just stayed red. The display port on the GPU didn't work either but when I switched to the hdmi on the GPU it was fine (this was after removing and re-installing the GPU but I'm not sure that step was actually necessary).

Mine is 6700k and a z170 though so the bios issue isn't relevant but it might be worth a try.

RedXIV

Not sure I'm lucky enough for it to be that easy but I'll definitely try that in a few hours when I get home! Thanks for the tip!

EDIT: Have also just identified someone with a compatible CPU if needed Cheers Mickeroo!

Mickeroo

Yeah i think the bios update is more likely the issue but your OP just seemed so similar to what happened when I booted mine up for the first time I thought I'd mention.

Edit: Hah! just saw your edit, I'd be happy to help if I can but there's probably someone on here closer to Dublin I'm sure

srsly78

Next stupid question, can it be updated via usb stick? Some boards can.

RedXIV

srsly78 wrote: »

Next stupid question, can it be updated via usb stick? Some boards can.

I saw that but I THINK it still needs a CPU. Although I can't seem to find anything that explicitly says so.

This is what I was reading:
http://www.asrock.com/feature/instantflash/index.asp

My (questionable) logic is that if I need to do it during POST, as per the link above, but I can't get it to POST because of incompatible CPU, I'm still sunk

Would be delighted to be corrected though!

srsly78

I had this problem a few years ago, and was able to flash the bios from usb without any cpu present. Was an asus ROG board.

And yeah, WITHOUT a cpu!?!? Fukkin magic!

RedXIV

Hey all,

Quick update before I get my hands dirty trying to flash the motherboard.

The bad news is that the suggestion from Mickeroo didn't work, but cheers all the same!

The good news is that after reading the support documentation on the manufacturers website, I discovered that the BIOS version is identified with a sticker on the board. The version is 3.50. which means I may be able to get the cheap CPU's called out earlier by the guys in some very helpful posts

I'm going to try and flash the motherboard now anyway, as spending more time putting it together and taking it apart can only help educate me

Will keep ye posted!

Red

Grahamer666

Sounds like you'll get it sorted anyway. I'm starting my first pc build tomorrow so may chime in on this thread if i need to.

RedXIV

In the spirit of closure, just to let people know, I couldn't instant flash it after all, so I ordered a cpu from Amazon for 50 quid which was compatible. It got 3 minutes of use and Bobs your uncle, everything is working well now

Thanks to everyone for their help with this, I really appreciate it!

Now on to the dark art of cable management!

Grahamer666

Grahamer666 wrote: »

Sounds like you'll get it sorted anyway. I'm starting my first pc build tomorrow so may chime in on this thread if i need to.

My build worked out too. No problems so far...

RedXIV

Apologies for keeping this going gents but looking for a bit of advice on monitors.

At the moment my lovely new build is hooked up to an old tv which isn't ideal.

I'd like to get a decent monitor for this but unsure if Its worth from going from 1920x1080 to a 4k monitor from a cost perspective?

Had a look on amazon there this evening and found a bunch of HD monitors for around £100-£120 but I couldn't find a 4k monitor for anything less than £350. Is this the norm?

I was planning to have dual monitors also, from a processing perspective, would my system have the capacity to run a 4k and "normal" HD screen or should I stick with 2 HD screens?

Thanks for the advice again guys, you're really helping me!

Red

Sheogorath

If you're looking to game I'm not sure if a 1070 is really up to 4k, at least not on max settings. As for a second screen, I don't think it should be too taxing if you're not doing anything overly demanding on it, just connect it to the motherboard

RedXIV

Sheogorath wrote: »

If you're looking to game I'm not sure if a 1070 is really up to 4k, at least not on max settings. As for a second screen, I don't think it should be too taxing if you're not doing anything overly demanding on it, just connect it to the motherboard

I'm trying to do a bit more research on it and some further points which may be helpful to anyone who takes the (much appreciated) time to give input:

• Most games I'd play are slow paced, I'd play FPS once in a while but by no means competitive
• I'm thinking of going for 2 24" monitors
• The desk area I have is quite small, I'll only be 3-4 feet away from the screens
• I'll only ever play games on one screen, the other will almost always be used with doing coding/development

wotzgoingon

I would go 27" 144Hz at 1440P with GSync. Expensive with Gsync but totally worth it.

I'm with AMD so I have a 27" 2560x1440 144Hz Freesync. I know the Gsync are more expensive than the Freesync but it is totally worth it your 1070 will play a lot of games at high refresh rates.

4K is good but you need at least a Titan Xp to have decent frame rates. I use a R9 Fury X and it plays a lot of games I have at high frequency's. The most demanding game I own is GTA V and I play that at 75 FPS average with high details.

Sheogorath

From what I've heard I'm not too sure if a 4k 24" is worth it, a 1440p might look almost as good but is cheaper, with such a small screen the extra pixels have less effect.
As for coding on the second screen it shouldn't impact performance with a 7700k

Sheogorath

wotzgoingon wrote:

Expensive with Gsync but totally worth it

Would it really be with slow paced games though? I'm in a similar position (looking for a monitor) and have been getting the impression it only has much impact for FPS games

wotzgoingon

Adaptive sync is totally worth it more so than 144Hz as I can hardly tell the difference between 75-144Hz but I see a big difference with adaptive sync.

Mickeroo

I think this is probably the most affordable 27" 144hz 1440p G-Sync monitor around: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-S2716DG-27-Inch-Gaming-Monitor/dp/B01784K78A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492674633&sr=8-1&keywords=dell+s2716dg

Grahamer666

Mickeroo wrote: »

I think this is probably the most affordable 27" 144hz 1440p G-Sync monitor around: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-S2716DG-27-Inch-Gaming-Monitor/dp/B01784K78A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492674633&sr=8-1&keywords=dell+s2716dg

Why does it say 'Max Screen Resolution' is 1920X1080 when it's a 1440p monitor? Very misleading

TerrorFirmer

To be honest for someone who plays mostly slow paced games with the odd FPS like he's mentioned, a 144hz G-sync screen is really massive overkill.

If you're getting dual screens I'd say dual 1440p standard 60hz is perfect. 1440P is great for productivity as well as gaming. Or else 1x1440P and 1x1080P. (1440p for games though, a GTX1070 is wasted at 1080p)

A GTX1070 is obviously also perfectly fine for 4K gaming, just not at ultra settings in most of the latest games but if you're playing slow paced games, a lot of them would run fine at 4K high/ultra on the GTX1070.