I'm new to these forums and I'm not sure I'm posting this in the right section, but I hope someone could help me out.
Here are the specs for my computer:
Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard
Intel i7 4930k CPU
16gb G Skill Ram
EVGA Geforce 980 Ti GPU
500gb SSD
3tb HDD
4tb HDD
1000 Watt Seasonic Platinum Power Supply
I've been running this setup for several years now with no real problems.
Several days ago, I noticed that my computer would randomly crash and restart. I'd turn it on and it would boot just fine. But after about 15 to 20 minutes, it would be like the power was cut off for a second, then would come back on and the computer would boot up again. No error screens or anything.
What I figured was the problem is that the power supply had a pin or two that was disconnected from the CPU power connector, so the power was insufficient. I checked all the connections and made sure all the pins were making contact. I've had that happen before that the motherboard wasn't getting sufficient power because of pins that had come out of the connector.
But what's happening now is that the computer won't boot at all. The motherboard has lights that light up when the power supply is connected, but when I press the power button, nothing happens. I hear a clicking sound but the computer doesn't boot at all, even though the lights on the motherboard are on.
So I disconnected the power supply from everything and did the paperclip test to isolate the problem. Strangely, it seems to be a problem with the graphics card.
If I do the paperclip test with the graphics card connected to the PSU, nothing powers on and I hear a clicking sound from the PSU. But if I disconnect the graphics card but leave everything else connected, the rest of the components power up just fine.
I guess this would mean that the graphics card is faulty, but that doesn't make much sense to me. When I've had graphics card failures in the past, usually the computer would boot up and I'd see visual problems with the display, or the motherboard would turn on and give an error code.
It's almost like the graphics card is shorting out the power supply and activating it's protection circuit. I tried swapping out a different PCI-E power cable, and plugged it into different ports on the PSU with the same result.
I have a backup graphics card that I tried but it seems to not be working either. It's a cheap one that doesn't require any PSU connections. I can plug in into a different PCI-E port on the motherboard and leave the other graphics card alone. The motherboard allows me to turn on or off individual PCI-E ports, so I turn off the one with the 980 Ti.
With this configuration the motherboard and other components boot up but there is no image on the screen. The motherboard displays an error code (error 34) and two yellow lights are on.
I really don't understand what the problem could be. I carefully checked all the temperatures of the CPU and graphics card the last time the computer was working and they were quite low. The CPU was at around 35 degrees Celcius and the GPU was around 26 degrees Celcius. I'm running a water cooling loop, just so you know.
I don't really have any ideas about what could be going on here. I tried to be as detailed as possible, and I hope someone here can help in some way.
Thanks!
