Motherboard or CPU?

[Demonic Donut]

I'm trying to fix a friend's Dell Precision T1650 and have run into a bit of a wall.

 

It was boot looping and giving a memory errors via LED flashes.

 

I picked up the tower and tried each memory module individually and in different slots with no luck.

 

I removed the CPU (Xeon E3 1270 v2) and put it in a motherboard of mine (Gigabyte z77a-g43) and it wouldn't post with the RAM from the system but would post with some of my old ram.

 

I tried my RAM in my friends system and it gave memory errors again. I even used a fresh windows install drive I use for testing, different power supply etc and everything works with the gigabyte board but not the Dell board.

 

So I ordered a new Dell motherboard, same exact model, from a vendor. The new board won't even throw an error code, it just boot loops quickly. Fans spin for 2-3 seconds and power off, power on, power off etc.

 

I contacted the vendor but it is a holiday weekend and don't expect to hear back until Monday.

 

Is it likely I just got a bad board or is the CPU bad? I would be surprised if that's the case seeing that it works fine in my z77 board but not the Dell one.

 

Thoughts and ideas welcome. My friend is coming to visit next weekend and I was hoping to get it going for them.

[vertigo220]

Make sure BIOS is updated and everything is disconnected except CPU, GPU (if needed), and one stick of RAM. No drives. Since the CPU works in another computer it seems very unlikely that's the issue. It also seems unlikely you replaced a bad motherboard with a bad motherboard, but it's certainly possible. But maybe the first was bad and the new one just needs an update. Also, try clearing CMOS.

[Demonic Donut]

22 minutes ago, vertigo220 said:

Make sure BIOS is updated and everything is disconnected except CPU, GPU (if needed), and one stick of RAM. No drives. Since the CPU works in another computer it seems very unlikely that's the issue. It also seems unlikely you replaced a bad motherboard with a bad motherboard, but it's certainly possible. But maybe the first was bad and the new one just needs an update. Also, try clearing CMOS.

Thanks for the reply.

 

I tried CMOS, but I'll look into updating the bios. I'm not even getting a splash screen etc but I'll see what I can do to get into the Dell bios.