no POST problems

[JoshW123]

Hey guys, so I recently bought myself the corsair H100i GTX liquid cooler and a 16GB kit of corsair RAM. I installed everything but when I was applying the thermal paste to the CPU I accidentally got some on the underside of the CPU (the part which makes contact with the motherboard) and looked up ways of cleaning it off. I found a method which involved gently swabbing the area with a cotton bud which had been dipped in high purity alcohol and leaving that to dry which I did. When it came to starting the computer I found it wasn't POSTing so I removed everything except the CPU. When I started the computer it powered on for a moment before turning off, it kept cycling through this process until I turned it off. I then unplugged the power supply and inserted 1 stick of the RAM, it then made it to the BIOS where it said no drive was found. I turned it all off again and installed the second stick of RAM and once again it made it to the BIOS. However when I plug in the drive with the OS the computer won't POST anymore.

 

I don't have any spare hardware to swap out for any of the existing hardware, however, the fact I can get it to POST when all I have connected to the motherboard is the CPU, RAM and power supply suggest to me that the issue isn't with any of those components.

 

Any advice with what to do would be appreciated

 

My Specs:

CPU - Intel i5 4690k

Motherboard - GigaByte GA - Z97X - Gaming 3

PSU - Corsair CX750M

RAM - Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 1600MHz (2x8) 16GB

Drive - Samsung 850 Evo 256GB

[UnlimitedTMD]

have you tried different sata ports?

[JoshW123]

Just tried plugging it into a different sata port and still no POST. Also I have found that if I then disconnect the sata cable and try turning the system on again it won't POST, the only way I can get it to POST again is by removing all the ram then inserting it one at a time.

[JoshW123]

After looking more closely at the motherboard and the online manual, it seems there are two sets of sata connectors, the regular sata 3 connector and sata express, it seems that the computer fails to boot when I have anything plugged into the sata express ports. Could faulty sata express ports be causing the POST failures?

[Nite-Ninja]

Could be that your current BIOS version may not support those connectors very well, and consider looking into your motherboard manufacturer's website for a flashing utility.

SATA Express also shares the same lanes as PCI-E, so unless the connectors themselves were going bad, you'd have bigger problems.

[JoshW123]

Looks like I made a mistake in my last post, I am not using the Sata express port and while doing my testing the PCIe slots and the M.2 slot are not being used. The motherboard has 2 blocks of Sata ports. The first block has 2 Sata 3 ports labeled ports 0 & 1, these ports can always be used regardless of what else is installed. There is another block of Sata ports which has 1 Sata express port, not being used, and 4 more Sata 3 ports, ports 2-5. Only the m.2, sata express or sata 3 ports 4&5 can be used at one time, however neither the M.2 nor sata express ports are being used so in theory the sata 3 ports 4&5 should be fine to use.

 

When I plug my boot ssd and another drive into the ports in the first block of sata3 ports (0&1) the system starts up normally with no issues. It is only when I plug any sata3 device into any of the remaining sata 3 ports (2-5) in the other block that I begin to get POST issues.

 

Could this still be a BIOS issue?