Motherboards 3 In a row? Are my motherboard purchases really that unlucky?

Ok, in the last month, I have had to go though 3 different motherboards, 2 Asus and one Gigabyte. I'm not entirely sure what the problem really is, but here is the entire story

1st : The first motherboard I had survived for around 3 months, then died one day, computer crashed, had to do a hard reset, and it never again booted after that, no post, no bios, nothing. Just a blank screen. It was a ASUS M4A785T-M 785G Socket AM3 ordered from Ebuyer.com

2nd: The replacement for this board as i sent it back to Ebuyer, was a Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H 880G Socket AM3 board, and this was faulty upon the day of arrival, i never thought i could be that unlucky, and I was sure that it was the motherboard that was faulty, as opposed to another of my components, due to me trying the other parts on another cpu, all of the RAM sticks seem to be working and I assume that if the power supply was faulty, I wouldn't get all the fans and power button to function correctly.

3rd: Today I bought a Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3, AMD 880G from YOYOTECH on tottenham court road. They assured me that none of the models were faulty. Low and behold, I get home and try the board, and no POST'ing, once again.


My system consists of:
AMD Phenom II x2 555 dual-core
4gb Corsair 1333 ram (4x2)
OCZ Xstream 500W Modular PSU
Palit SONIC Platinum 1gb GDDR5 GPU


Can anyone tell me what else this might be other than a faulty motherboard, because I don't understand how unlucky I can be to have 3 motherboards fail in just under a month :S


Any help would be much appreciated.

 

1. Have you tested your RAM with memtest or memtest+ ?
2. What graphics card do you have (no model listed there)?
3. Have you tried a different psu?
4. What cooling do you have in your case?

 

1: Memtest?
2: its an NVIDIA 460
3: Not tried a different psu, but I have tried the same PSU on a different board, and it works
4: All air cooling, 2x 200mm intake fans, and 3 x140 out-take fans and the back and top of the case

 

It happens some times, forum member 23RO_UK had 3 Gigabyte X58-UD3's DOA one of which worked for about 20 minutes and then died. It was 4th time lucky for him.

 

1. Memtest+
2. Thanks
3. You mentioned the first one ran for 3 months and then had issues. Did you try your psu on another board for 3 months? I would get another psu to try booting up.
4. Thanks

When you say it doesn't boot, what exactly happens? No lights, no fans etc?
Or does it start but not make it to windows?

 

So there's a potential for me to just be VERY unlucky?

 

I get all lights, all fans spin, but no Posting, no american megatrends screen, unable to get anywhere near the bios, its like the screen doesn't turn on

No i just tested the PSU with the other board each time the boards failed. I'm tempted to try a CMOS reset with this new board and see what happens.

 

by "other board", what do you mean? The replacements?

Is your vga/dvi cable plugged in? Had to ask.....
It might be that your psu gave up and fried your first board, then the next few boards were nuked when you plugged them in.. Its really worth a try borrowing a psu from someone to rule it out.

 

My "otherboard" is an older DDR2 gigabyte board that I have around to test my components. The computer I'm typing from is a DDR3 Compaq which I used to test the Ram and CPU.

Ah ok, just need to find someone to get a psu from as the other other power supply I have only has the big ATX plug and no atx plug for the CPU (8 pin, i think :S)
Thing is, if the PSU was dead, should I really be getting the fans and all the lights turning on?

 

That happens, yes.
Have you tried removing the graphics card and booting up then?
Is your buzzer plugged in so you can hear the beep codes?

 

I've not been putting the graphics card in since the 2nd board, only been using a single stick of ram, the CPU and keyboard and PSU

The buzzer doesn't seem to be working.

UPDATE: Just tried CMOS reset, nothing, also tried a different powersupply, found the 400w psu that was used with the "old" board. Still no posting and no getting past a blank screen.

 

have you actually tested the power supply, just because the fans are working doesn't mean its not faulty

 

How'd you mean? tried in another board?

 

no i mean with a proper tester, something like this

 

No I haven't.
I've tried it on two other boards to the ones I actually want to use, and there seems to be no problems.

 

hmmm, the other boards, can you test the other components in them?

 

I can in one of them. I've tried the Ram, cpu and GPU in one of them. The other board is DDR2 and has no PCI-E slot so I can't test the Ram or GPU in it. But I have tried both other boards with each individual power supply, and each with just one stick of ram and the keyboard.

 

I would need a completely brand new motherboard and PSU to even check if it is the PSU or Mobo, wouldn't I?

 

yes i thinkso, but you could take stuff down to local store and see if they would be willing to test stuff for you, there may be a small fee for that.

 

Had 4 motherboards die, turns out it was my Enermax PSU, might be something worth taking into consideration. Was overvolting and I was lucky to get a week out each board. Expensive month