Computer keeps turning on and off on it's own

[Matthecat]

I don't know how to explain, but it gets to the point here it shows the gigabyte logo and the buttons to press to enter bios, post and qflash, then shuts off. I don't know whether it's the PSU or ram, and is there any way to flash the bios without getting in?

[trayton]

Alright this is how I would trouble shoot.

1) turn off machine remove power cord from back (yes remove it completely) then push the POWER ON BUTTON on your tower hold it in for 10 seconds then release for a few seconds and repeat this twice...

2) Open your tower, remove all sticks of ram except 1

3) Sniff your power supply does anything smell "funny" hard to explain but you'll know it if u smell it.

4) Unplug anything that is not essential (hard drives, cdroms, etc) (only things we want on is both connectors from psu to your motherboard, cpu, and cpuhsf, ram, and video card (with power connected to it to of course.)

5) after you have done the above steps plug in the power to your psu again wait for the green light to show on mobo, then try booting.

Hopefully this will get you to bios (if so then make sure you set it back to factory defaults or optimized defaults!)

Best of luck!

[Matthecat]

What green light am I looking for? The phase indicators? Nothing lit up when I plugged it back in.

Anyways I've pretty much isolated it to either CPU or Mobo. Nothing smells funky with the PSU and it reads the ram properly before it shuts itself down. I'll probably have to replace this junk board. Not getting gigabyte ever again lol.

[clone63]

Can you not get into the bios when it prompts you for key selection?

[Matthecat]

Nope. It just shuts off before it can go to bios regardless of whether I'm pressing del or not.

[clone63]

Wellll then.... If you are confident the ram is OK, sounds like the board is kapoot. I suppose there is a chance the cpu went south, but I've only ever seen that once contrasted to the many boards that have died..
You could try getting your hands on a BIOS chip, but usually if the BIOS is corrupt, it doesn't get to the post screen.
I don't know.. It all sucks, even if it ends up working, that was a lot of time wasted. Best of luck

[Matthecat]

Thanks. I'll try with other ram before anything else. Such a disappointment. I remember the blue screen saying there has been damage due to overclocking but I'm not sure whether it's the CPU or not. I've read that this board has problems and gave that error message to people who didn't overclock and as far as I can tell, my CPU wasn't overclocked at the time it crashed.

[ilya]

I know you've reseated and all, but given everything you've tried it just sounds to me like something is overheating. Could be the VRMs/chipset/CPU, or just a dead board.

[Matthecat]

What leads me to believe that it's a motherboard problem is that the boot cycle follows a specific pattern. It boots for approximately 2 seconds and the screen stays black then shuts off, then boots again and makes it to the splash of the gigabyte logo with all of the command prompts and shuts off. Then it just keeps repeating the cycle. If something was overheating or there was a problem with another component, I don't think it would follow this specific pattern. Anyways I'm going to sleep on it and troubleshoot some more when I get back from my exam tomorrow. Thanks for the help everyone! It is much appreciated :)

[ilya]

Originally Posted by Matthecat

It boots for approximately 2 seconds and the screen stays black then shuts off, then boots again and makes it to the splash of the gigabyte logo with all of the command prompts and shuts off. Then it just keeps repeating the cycle.

I missed this in the title - there's a very common issue with Gigabyte boards that sounds like what you've just described.

What happens is the board detects a bad BIOS setting and tries to fix itself but fails to do so over and over, hence the repeating cycle of reboots. Sometimes it eventually fixes itself, but most of the time you need to clear the CMOS. I know you already said you did it, but I'd do it again just to be sure.