Darkroe

Turns out it didn't work. Going back on the hunt for a service manual for the e178fpb instead of the e178fpc (since the main boards seem to be different enough) or a schematic for the 4h.08y01.a02 mainboard. Or just find a Dell 17" that is that e178fpc XD

The CN902 connector makes a LOT more sense; thanks! I am having the panel be transparent, so I don't need to worry about powering the backlight since my case lights will take care of that for me, so no need for the power board or an inverter board; just the control board to output the image to the panel, which will be backlit by the lights inside my case. Funny enough: the only pinouts printed on the actual boards themselves just read: "GPTP##", where the ## are filled by various numbers, and I am assuming they are test points. So if I am understanding correctly: If I connect a Molex 5V to pin 7 or 8, I should have my 5V power, and if I connect a Molex Ground to pin 5, 6, 9, or 10, I should have my ground connection! I'll test this when I get home from work. THANK YOU SO MUCH for the input! As someone who is just getting into understanding PCB layouts and diagrams, this helped a lot. Do you know any good resources for learning these sorts of things, similarly to how w3schools is a good resource for coding languages? I'll update the post whenever I finish setting up the mod.

In short: I am doing a mod where I turn my PC case's side panel into a monitor by gutting a monitor and putting its display panel inside my case's side panel. The Plan: Use Molex 5V power to power the main board that controls the display panel. Problem: finding the 5V connector on the Main Board that powers the display panel's controller. The monitor I am trying to use is the Dell E178FPB, a 17" monitor. I searched the internet for a service manual, but only found the service manual for the E178FPC model (attached). Since the models are nearly identical, I figure they SHOULD have the same logic board, but I am not sure. My main board is a 4H.08Y01.A02 (picture attached) and I don't think it matches the main board I see in the service manual, but it is the closest thing I have found to figuring out where the 5V pin is. On the main board in the service manual on page 35 in the top left hand corner is a part labeled CN701, which seems to match the location of the power pins seen on page 40 of the service manual, as it is also labeled as CN701. From looking at page 35, if I am understanding the diagram correctly (background: I am NOT used to reading these kinds of diagrams): the 5th pin from the top (with the top pin being pin 1) is the 5V pin, with pins 4 and 6 being ground pins. Am I reading that correctly? I just wanted more opinions on my amateur analysis before I went and tried powering the board this way and accidentally fry something for not understanding something properly. The Question, Summarized: Am I correct in assuming that pin 5 of CN701 is the 5V pin I am looking for? Image of the Main Board and the Service Manual are attached to the post. The pins I am looking at on the main board are located in the top left of the image. 1618709.pdf

I actually tried using a hair dryer (same principle) for about 10 minutes; forgot to mention that. Same issues as before. On the bright side, the GPU looks very clean now.

Probably a good idea; I'll give it a go. I'll try it with Ubuntu as I have an ISO of that just sitting around.

A friend gave me their Sapphire Radeon R9 270 Dual-X to diagnose as it suddenly stopped working in their system. With my test PC, I loaded up a fresh copy of Windows and tried seeing if any of the GPU's display outputs worked. HDMI? No. DP? No. DVI? Yes! Granted, this was just with the basic Microsoft Display Driver, but it shows an image. Here's where the problem gets interesting. I tried downloading the driver for the GPU through Windows update (it might be an older driver, but they typically work). As soon as the AMD driver was installed: black screen, no image. But the fans were still spinning, albeit a little slower than before at a constant RPM. I shut down and rebooted the PC. Interestingly, the GPU outputted an image for the boot screen (motherboard logo + spinning circles), but as soon as Windows loaded, black screen again. I checked to make sure there was still an image by removing the GPU and using my CPU's integrated graphics. Yep, there's an image. So I decided put the GPU back in to see if it would output an image. After Windows' went through the "Repairing your PC" and "Diagnosing your PC" steps, it loaded into Windows with a higher resolution image. You'd think "Ah, success!" But alas: No. Upon launching Heaven Benchmark, a slew of errors prevented the benchmark from launching, citing VRAM errors and GPU detection errors. Curious, I loaded up GPU-Z. It properly detected the GPU. Going over to Device Manager, It also detected the correct GPU, but it had the yellow exclamation triangle indicating that, while it could see the GPU, the driver was either corrupt or not compatible with the GPU. So I decided to use DDU to uninstall all previous display drivers, downloaded AMD drivers from AMD's website, and set my WiFi to Airplane mode after downloading the AMD drivers so Windows Update wouldn't interfere when I went to install the AMD drivers. After a restart, I launched the driver installer only for the installer to say it could not detect a GPU compatible with the software, even though the GPU is listed under the compatible hardware on AMD's website. No problem, I just decided to download an older version of the software on another computer, move it over to my test system, and try launching that driver software. It allowed me to install the driver this time, but when it finished installing the driver: black screen. So it was pretty clear that somehow ANY AMD driver, once installed, was not working properly with the GPU. I decided to try and flash a fresh BIOS onto the GPU. I did so successfully, using the same version it had before, but with the BIOS file from Tom's Hardware's BIOS database for the specific model GPU. Then I attempted every previous test again, only to get the same results. I then tried giving the GPU a deep-clean, scanning over all the components to see if anything was broken / missing. Nothing is broken / missing. So I am stumped, and am assuming the GPU is dead for some reason. If anyone has any ideas, please share! Thanks for reading this far; have a great rest of your day! -Darkroe

They have an Asus Prime b350M-A motherboard. The RAM sticks have been working fine since late 2017, and only recently started having issues, hence why I think it's the motherboard. I don't suspect a corrupt BIOS since I installed a fresh BIOS only to encounter the same issues without fail. I also saw that others encountered the same issue with this particular motherboard, and just upgraded to a b450 board to fix their issue. One other thing I forgot to mention: the RAM isn't being OCd at the moment. When DOCP is enabled, the system has issues (which I attribute to Ryzen gen 1 being...picky), but ran fine before with stock RAM speeds in dual channel. So for the RAM to suddenly start having issues is weird, especially since CPUs don't typically degrade like that, especially ones that pull only 65W (and never get above 69 C in my friend's system under synthetic full load). I've definitely considered recommending they get a newer CPU, but their budget is pretty tight, since they're full-time in University, and have the budget for a new motherboard right now. Fortunately, they can run a single stick of RAM without issue, but it definitely slows down their performance when they want to relax after studying and play games.

Hello all, My friend has a b350 motherboard at the moment that has an issue running more than 1 stick of RAM. Both RAM sticks they have work fine on their own, but when both RAM sticks are installed in any valid configuration, the system won't even boot. So, he's decided to get a new motherboard. Problem: how can I make sure the BIOS of the board they buy (b450 chipset) would definitely work with their Ryzen 5 1400 CPU? I know that after certain BIOS updates, CPU support may fall off, particularly if a b450 board has a BIOS that supports Ryzen 5000 CPUs. Currently I am looking at the ASUS TUF GAMING B450M-PLUS II board since it has BIOS flashback, so in theory I could flash the BIOS back to one that works with the Ryzen 5 1400 if the BIOS is too new. I didn't see any warnings that the BIOS couldn't be flashed back to a previous version when I was browsing Asus' product support page for this motherboard. Is my thought process good on this, or am I missing something? -Darkroe

Okay I found the solution, but I have NO IDEA why it changed in the first place: I asked Microsoft Support for help (which STRANGELY worked in this case) and the automated bot came back with something about display configuration, so I typed "display configuration reverts to one screen only windows 10" into google and was presented with the "Windows Logo Key + P" shortcut. This leads to Windows 10's display configuration side tab where my settings were set to "PC Screen Only" for some reason. I changed it to "Extend" and VOILA! Problem solved! However, I noted that in the Display Settings, whenever I have "PC Screen Only" enabled through the "Windows Logo Key + P" shortcut, the "Multiple Displays" category in "Display Settings" vanishes, and so without the "Windows Logo Key + P" shortcut, I cannot access the "Multiple Displays" settings in "Display Settings." So it appears somehow when PowerPoint crashed, it enabled "PC Screen Only" in the "Multiple Displays" category in "Display Settings." I have sent Microsoft an e-mail about it. It may just be an isolated incident, so I won't worry about it too much, but that was odd and frustrating. Thank you to everyone who made suggestions on this post.

New report: the second monitor shows the windows icon when loading in after turning on the computer, but as soon as windows reaches the login screen, the second monitor displays nothing

The only port the Acer monitor uses (the one Windows can't use as a second monitor for some reason) is an HDMI port, which worked fine until the incident, and still works fine if the Acer monitor is the only one connected to my GPU

Monitors are an Acer S220HQL and a Dell 1920 x 1200 monitor (whose model number I do not know)

Ryzen 5 1600 RX 580 GB 32 GB 2666MHz RAM ASUS Crosshair VI Hero Motherboard 2 x 1 TB SSDs (1 for OS 1 for Data Storage) Attached is an image: it sees the monitor but can't do anything with it now. If the second monitor is, instead, my main monitor (ie: I unplug my other monitor and only have this second monitor plugged in) it works fine.

I was doing a Power Point presentation for class on Zoom, using only 1 screen. I plug in my second screen after the presentation is done, it is working fine. I exit out of Power Point. Suddenly screen flickers and now I can't use my second monitor. Either monitor works fine as my main monitor, but my computer cannot use both simultaneously anymore. Any idea what happened?

I just bought a Team MP33 NVMe 1TB SSD. I tried formatting it in gpt, but that failed, and sometimes succeeded, but when it succeeded it reported back 2048GB, and when it failed it listed the drive's proper storage capacity of ~950GB, and sometimes it wouldn't format and was listed at 1023MB. I am at a loss of what to do. I have tried editing BIOS settings. I have tried re-seating the SSD. Nothing works.I even tried reinstalling the NVMe driver. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I may be doing wrong? I don't want to RMA it only to have the same issues again. For reference, my system: Ryzen 5 1600 Team 32GB 3000MHz RAM Asus Crosshair VI Hero AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB