Well, that escalated quickly...

An0maly_76 · March 28, 2022

And quite strangely, I might add.

This evening, I powered down to install a splitter cable to allow full functionality of my front panel inputs. Long story short, I wasn't aware my case's front panel I/O used two separate cables, and the board I chose was not equipped to handle both, requiring a splitter cable and adapter, which took some searching to find the right ones. I don't use front I/O often, if at all, but if it's there, I want it to work as it should.

Quick five minute install, button it back up, and all was well -- for about three hours.

Playing BeamNG.drive, without warning, the screen went black and every fan went full speed. This is a new build, so I'm gritting my teeth and uttering some highly minced oaths at this point, because I am past my Amazon return window on most of these parts. Also, my setup is unorthodox in that my machine sits sideways behind my 55" display on one of those gargantuan entertainment centers from the 90s that looks more like a bookcase, and I have pretty severe asthma, so taking this thing down for diagnosis and putting it back in place is NOT fun for me.

I might also mention that I highly likely have Asperger's Syndrome (high-functioning autism) and I am a bit of a hothead when it comes to this sort of thing -- I HATE having to fight with things to make them work properly, and have been known to destroy them if pushed too far. To illustrate, when I drove big rigs, a misbehaving Samsung Galaxy S3 met its end beneath one of the front tires of a Freightliner, as I calmly ran the steering wheel lock-to-lock several times, grinning maniacally as I did so.

No, I'm not insane. No, I'm not psycho. But I do NOT put up with electronics that p**s me off. To quote Chris Tucker, "I'll b***h slap you back to Bangkok!" That said, while I'm not likely to destroy what I spent twice what I planned on, this sardine, butter, mustard cracker sandwich eatin' *insert your favorite string of expletive(s) here* better not think for one second I won't part it out. I've spent too much money on this thing to do it right to put up with even a little bit of fighting with it. It's run fine for two weeks now. I don't play this game, and I will only fight with something for so long before I will put it out of its misery. Johnny Five's cries of "No disassemble!" will bring no sympathy from me at that point. For those who remember The Incredible Hulk -- "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry..."

Nonetheless, it is what it is. So I wrestled this thing down, plugged it in and turned it on. DRAM light, with all fans at full speed and the GPU / mobo pulsing their RGBs (which I had set to dark). Rut-row, Raggy. More minced oaths, increasing in intensity and colorfulness. Power down, remove RAM modules, blow on the contacts and sockets to ensure a piece of dust is not messing with it, reseat, then power back up. Voila. A seemingly delayed sequence of POST lights (I guess I haven't really paid attention to their normal sequence as this is the first issue I've had with this build), and at some point the BOOT light went green. Without a display connected, I could only presume the problem was gone. Now I get to wrestle Humpty Dumpty back up on his wall.

On restart, the BIOS gave an error message that the GPU was not supported and that changes had been made for compatibility. Whatever the hell THAT is supposed to mean -- I've never seen this error message before. EVER. Once I cleared that, the machine booted into Windows, and all seems well. GPU is ID'ing properly and GPUTweak can put it into OC mode. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but I'm almost afraid to reboot it. I find it hard to believe that the DIMM slot latches just magically released for no reason after two weeks and about eighty hours of use. So, my friends, this begs the question...