Marketplace sold item problem

If someone has a celeron that might be better - it might need a celeron in it and a bios update.

 

Good idea.

 

Hey guys. Went up to Oxford after work on Friday to give Oscar a hand in diagnosing things, as mentioned on the market. He covered my petrol, and made me a strong enough coffee to get back to Southampton afterwards

All of the symptoms he previously described were accurate. Although this was his first build it was clear he had put a lot of time and money into researching how to do things properly. He had everything you'd expect, even TIM cleaner and took great care when handling the components with an antistatic band on (I'm always just like maaaar, touch the radiator leg, right let's go).

Before doing anything else we set about testing the CPU and Memory in the Shuttle PC I brought with me, no problems with those.

Took the bare board and CPU, sat it outside of the case, 1 stick of RAM and secured the Hyper 212 cooler, short power pins to boot, nothing. Remove CMOS battery, power and a blank screen. Looks like a short on the board somewhere.

Remove cooler mount, rest heat-sink on top, nothing. Try a different PSU. Nothing.
Remove CMOS battery and it turns on and POSTs. OK. Switch PSU. Battery out, POST'd.
Great, repeat power on a few times. OK, lets assume it all works.

Set about mounting the cooler, making sure it's not in contact with anything on the base of the board. Place everything on the board and inside the case. Go to fire it up, nothing. Take battery out, switches on by itself but doesn't want to POST. Remove various things keep trying for about an hour, just can't get it to boot again.

In the process of doing all this I checked over the board and other bits. Nothing amiss. Pins on CPU socket are all fine, not so much as a fingerprint on the board.

So yeah, maybe some weak traces around the socket, could have been bent over time or just something has gone awry on it. I would say the problem lies with the board. I did recommend to Oscar before I got there to go buy another board, I wanted to leave him with his new PC all working and it would have confirmed the issue full stop. Maybe he can get himself another board and show it up and running with everything else in situ.

Obviously there is a grey area on what happened before I got there. He's a nice guy and I think it's safe to assume he was careful in building it, I certainly saw him make no mistakes or damage to the board.

 

Before I discuss a few points raised by a few people here, I'll start with covering the CPU socket pins. I know it's a go-to troubleshoot to check the pins, and rest assured I've checked them again for the 4th or 5th time. This time I even checked with a magnifying glass. Despite all the reseats, the pins are looking fine and patterned. I don't know if the pics are high quality enough for you, but here they are:







Additionally, spazmochad looked at it and saw no bent pins.

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It'll probably help to let everyone know that I've put in CPUs and coolers before without any issue. It's just doing a whole build from scratch that I've never done before.

Rest assured, when I put in the CPU (dropped it lightly in, checking it was in safely, corner arrows alligned) and started lowering the lever only to be met with what seemed a very large resistance, my reaction was not to push the **** out of it until the son of a bitch went all the way down. I put small pressure to discover the resistance, and went straight to Google to find out if this was normal.

It turns out it is normal. The post I made in the build thread was partly quoting what I had seen other posts say. The sound described was exactly the same: like velcro as it's pushed down. Also, they described how worried they were the first time they did it.

Despite this evidence, I pushed it down halfway then stopped once more and double-double checked the seating and Google, only to be met with more reassuring examples.

To top it off, spazmochad seated my CPU last. So when I lifted the lever for checking and photographing the CPU socket, I pushed it back down again (before removing the CPU to take pictures) and that pressure and crunching/velcro sound was there again.

It also appears that there has been progressively less resistance. Either I'm getting used to it or it's just a case of it having more give the more it's used.

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I know you're frustrated, imagine how I feel too, but try to look at it from both sides. You've sold a lot of items, but that doesn't mean you're never going to get one problem in future that isn't someone else's fault. **** happens, that's for sure. I've sold and bought a lot of items on other websites, but here we both are with an issue, so it happens.

I never said or insinuated you're trying to cheat me. When I had the problem, I made a thread to try and find the problem. When the problem seemed to be the motherboard, I didn't namedrop you or say "it's the seller's fault". When I PMed you to tell you my progress, I asked you how you wanted to deal with it, whether you wanted me to send the motherboard back, whether you wanted to wait until I tested another board. I hadn't even mentioned refunds yet, let alone placed blame. When the problem arose, the first person I looked at myself and how I may have screwed up. But from asking others and looking at how I installed it, there doesn't seem to be a way in which I screwed up (by shorting it, mishandling it etc.) That doesn't mean it must be your fault. The delivery man might've dropped it for all we know. Or it might be something else.

We all started with 1 post and a recent join date, it wouldn't be fair to judge or discriminate based on that. There are people with thousands of posts and join dates a decade old I wouldn't give responsibility to. It would be a shame to say the least if you now thought everyone who only had a hundred posts or so was an idiot who breaks things, that wouldn't be a fair assumption.

As for the fans, to be fair, it seems a lot of people have problems with those rubbery mounts and even give up on them. At least I ended up successfully installing them. I never knew about these rubbery things that installed fans, surely it's worth something that I asked for advice and learned. Next time I have to install a fan with those rubber things, I'll just be able to do it now.

If no one doing their first build could buy anything from the marketplace, they might never learn.

I've not had a problem with other boards or any upgrading I've done. This is my first experience of something being FUBAR.

 

We had it booting briefly. Didn't think a CPU microcode update would be needed since the board was of Ivybridge era and the CPU was a Sandybridge

 

I only say it - because I fixed a giga z77N itx board for shuttlemodder (well for abezors but he sold it onto shuttlemodder) and when I sent him the board back it was doing almost exactly this, and because I'd been soldering the board we just assumed I broke it, but it turned out to be a bios error, i've pm'd shuttlemodder incase he can shed any helpful light on it.

 

Any outcome on this issue?

 

@Oscy. I know lots of suggestions have been made to try and pinpoint the problem so forgive me if this has already been suggested but are the four CPU heatsink mounting screws (arranged around the CPU socket) over-tightened? Were they already fitted to the board when you received it or did you fit them? Is there a little non-metal washer between each one and the mobo?

I've seen over-tightened heatsink mounting screws (and over-tightened motherboard screws in general) cause big problems in the past - mobo's don't like being squished. It's worth ruling out.

 

Not a word.

I redid the cooler (Hyper Evo 212) a few times, and also spazmochad put on washers when he redid it, thinking that could be the issue, but it made no difference.

 

I don't meant the heatsink itself, rather the four mounts that the heatsink attaches to (they can be seen in the pictures you posted above). Is that where Spazmod fitted the washers? Initially did you fit the mounts yourself or where they already on the board when you got it?

It's a tricky situation. On the one hand, you shouldn't have to pay for an item that doesn't work, whilst on the other hand, Phinix shouldn't be out of pocket because of damage that occurred after it left him. I hope you can both sort this out somehow.

 

Oh, I get what you mean. The washers were separating the back of the board to the back plate. I guess I'll have to try that or see if there's clearance.

 

Returning to my original point, make sure they (the four mounts, not the heatsink itself) are not over-tightened.

 

Just did them handtight, no change, and I'm fast running out of my previously full thermal paste and TIM. -_-

 

In that case I'm afraid I'm out of suggestions as everything else I can think of has already been covered.

 

Have we tried another CPU? I assume not. I just had a look in my box of bits and I have no spare SB Celeron any more


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

This is a tricky one, but I have to say if it was me, I'd bite my tongue and offer a full refund upon receipt of the returned item. I see no evidence of foul play from Oscar (or any reason to believe he got a good motherboard, manhandled it, and now wants rid of it).

All of us who take the responsibility of selling things on the marketplace must acknowledge that (as Oscar said) sh!t sometimes just happens, whether in transit or elsewhere.

As a seller I had one experience recently where the IBM Model M keyboard arrived quite badly damaged. Could have been the buyer, but my trust didn't take me there... I'm the seller, and I want to make this marketplace the best it can be, so I offered a full refund which would have left me £20 out of pocket. Buyer graciously refused my offer of a refund, which also makes this marketplace what it is.

Something tells me that drawing a line under this episode could set a particularly damaging precedent for the rest of BT transactions if stuff that is sincerely and genuinely received DOA is just overlooked, because... well... I said it worked, innit?

Not getting at you phinix but IMO you are in the more unenviable position. You have asked for advice, and that's mine.

 

Hi Oscar.
It's fine, I understand and I never said you wanted a refund from me straight away. I was saying that because of this issue I may end up with dead mobo in my hands and losing all money. This is totally new situation for me (for you too as you said) and based on your posts and forum I presumed you are inexperienced user and lots of stuff may happen when someone like that is building a PC for a first time. Again, I wasn't saying that this was the case.

As you said, you just asked me how I want to deal with it and I said I will ask people on our forum, that's all. I never accused you for anything, no hard feelings.

After giving a lot of thinking about this and all response from forum community, considering both sides, mine and yours situation and basically the summary of the problem (we cannot tell what really happened between me sending it and you starting the PC with mobo installed), I would like to ask you to send me motherboard back and I will offer you a half refund. This is based on the case that both sides lost on this transaction. Of course I will also pay half for postage the mobo to me (you can use parcel2go and hermes delivery, should cost £3-4 tops).

Please let me know if you agree on this either here of PM.

 

I'll have to think about it. First I'll see if the motherboard is indeed the problem, I'll know once I get the new motherboard which will be soon.

 

Going on the assumption the MB is the issue, since neither of you damaged it, can we not assume the damage happened in transit and claim on postal insurance?

 

I'm not sure if it isn't too late. We would need to show some kind of damage to the package I guess.
It was sent via Hermes and was covered by their insurance.
I'm not sure, but I think you can claim when you see at the delivery that package is damaged then you don't sign it or sth like that?