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Hoping for some help

a1eyedbandit
Level 7
Good Evening all,
I am new to the boards and I am in need of expert opinions.
I have had a long and tiring road with a CYBERPOWER PC that I bought back in 2016. Needless to say it worked beautifully until one day it just died ( 18 months after I bought it) . I gave it to a local repair guy who took seven months to tell me that the CPU and Motherboard died at the exact same moment. Replaced both the CPU, motherboard and threw in a new PSU for kicks and he sent it back to me.... No charge since it took nearly a year!
Anyways, I find that while the system works great, I am unable to connect my CD/DVD drive into anything. If I connect my CD/DVD optical drive in to SATA cable, or power cable, the system will not even turn on. NO lights, no beeps, no post..... just NOTHING.....
I have tried the following to fix:
1: New cables ( SATA and power)- didn't power
2: Different CD/DVD Drive - Didn't power

I am not sure if maybe the port on the board I am using is disabled ( how would I check), or if I'm just not going to have a CD/ DVD drive ( Don't really need it, but its annoying just staring at me)

Any help with this would be lovely.

Specs:
ASUS Maximus HERO VIII WHETSTONE
i7 7700k- No OC
MSI NVIDIA GTX 970- No OC
32gb DDR4 2600 RAM
125Gb SSD ( Boot drive)
1TB mechanical drive
Corsair CX 650M
LG M Disc CD/DVD RW ( Currently not plugged in)

Thanks you all for your help,

Bandit
3,962 Views
11 REPLIES 11

Korth
Level 14
I've never heard of WHETSTONE, but it seems to be a standard MAXIMUS VIII HERO marketed through different channels and bundled with a cool mousepad (and perhaps other accessories). ASUS sometimes markets MAXIMUS variants/bundles under different names.

The motherboard has 8 SATA3 ports (6 on native Intel Z170 PCH, 2 on add-on ASM1061), plus an M.2 slot.
SATA6G_1 and SATA6G_2 cannot be used if the M.2 is populated.

BIOS settings might be incorrect (SATA ports disabled, set to wrong SATA mode, have power-saving features on the SATA ports, or whatever).
PSU might be too weak during boot power surge (when all devices power up and all drives spin up), or there might be a fault/limitation with the specific PSU output cable you've plugged into your optical drive(s).

And, of course, your local repair guy may have installed motherboard or PSU parts with a dubious past ... they might be used hardware returned or traded in by another customer, perhaps because they didn't work properly, possibly repaired/refurbed and possibly not.

What happens when you try booting the system with your ODD swapped into the signal and power cables currently used by your 1TB HDD?
What happens when you try booting another computer with your ODD installed?
What happens when you reboot after Clear CMOS to ASUS defaults?
Which M8H firmware/BIOS version do you have installed?

ROG Z170/M8H User Manual
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

a1eyedbandit
Level 7
Wow, thank you so much for the reply. I have some time off work tomorrow and plan on attempting the advise you gave.
I know for a fact that the ODD works fine in other systems. A spare ODD did not work in my system
MY Bios current ver. 3504.

a1eyedbandit
Level 7
Updates: 5/22/2018
I took my mechanical HDD SATA cable and plugged it into the ODD. System powered up fine. I then went to plug in the PSU supply cord. Sadly it would not reach but I had a spare cable in the case ( connected to sata and peripherals on the corsair PSU) . I plugged that in and fired up the machine. Now, mind you, the mechanical drive was unplugged. The ODD was plugged in with the sata from the HDD mechanical and a spare PSU cord. When I powered up the system the ODD began to smoke from the SATA port. It became very hot. Immediately unplugged and did a visual check. Nothing appeared to be amiss. I gave it an hour or so and then re-plugged in the mechanical HDD and removed all cables from the ODD. System powered fine. No BIOS issues and thermals are holding nominal.
I still have no clue what happened.....5 hours later, computer running fine.....
Was the ODD bad?? Did I completely ruin my machine that I JUST got back??

Thanks for the continued advise and please don't try and laugh too hard.... After the cursing stopped all I could do was laugh.
Bandit

Korth
Level 14
Smoke and heat? Sounds like a serious electrical fault (chassis, cables, etc), or a dodgy motherboard, or a faulty PSU ... or some combination of the three (since bad electricals on any of these parts could electrically damage other components).

I think the best advice would be to get your repair guy check over the system hardware and install your drive(s) for you - before some sort of permanent failure/damage occurs. And avoid buying CYBERPOWER systems in the future, lol.
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

a1eyedbandit
Level 7
Hello
Yeah so I won’t go back to repair guy.... 7 months is nuts.
The system has since been flawless since I unplugged the dvd drive. I’ve called Best Buy which is the only local repair place left to see if they can do a diagnostic check. I am so disgusted by the whole situation.
I agree something is a miss, but I don’t see any damage to MB or cables. Could have been a bad connection or I may have plugged something in wrong causing a oversurge. I just can’t afford much more money into the rig.
Replacing the CPU and MB was pricy.
*

a1eyedbandit
Level 7
Update 5/28/2018
Best Buy and several friends now all concur. Power supply is under powered to support all the components. Computer has run smoothly since the " incident" and I feel assured it will remain thus.
The plan is to slowly upgrade components starting with the PSU.
Would anyone have a recommendation on a PSU brand and wattage that will allow be safe upgrading in the future??
Warmest regards and Happy Memorial Day

Bandit

claudej
Level 7
I'm pretty sure 650W is enough for your specs and that PSU should be reliable too.
Me, I've got similar specs with a 550W PSU.

I doubt you know what you do and I've trouble understanding you.
Example :
System powered up fine. I then went to plug in the PSU supply cord. ??

Be accurate,

From what I understand, I'd avoid both cables used for the smoking ODD.
I wonder if it's possible to mix up modular cables on PSU side, same socket for different purpose ?

If you still want, I'd try again the ODD with the REAL HDD cables if there's a way (like unscrewing the ODD).

(still, for a new PSU you might want to check out Tom's Hardware, lots of reviews, including yours)

claudej wrote:
I wonder if it's possible to mix up modular cables on PSU side, same socket for different purpose ?

Yes, it's possible. Less likely on quality PSUs, especially unlikely on more recent models, perhaps even an issue which has been or will be entirely corrected as years pass(ed) by.

But lower-end modular PSUs and old modular PSUs sometimes had configuration limits and no real safeguards to prevent Bad Things from happening when they were misconfigured by the user. The assumption was that the user should *always* read the user manual and should not exceed the limits. Even today that's good advice, maybe unnecessary but maybe the difference between a mighty beast computer and a smoking ruin computer.

Best Buy would not be my first choice. 😛
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

Korth wrote:
Yes, it's possible. Less likely on quality PSUs, especially unlikely on more recent models, perhaps even an issue which has been or will be entirely corrected as years pass(ed) by.

But lower-end modular PSUs and old modular PSUs sometimes had configuration limits and no real safeguards to prevent Bad Things from happening when they were misconfigured by the user. The assumption was that the user should *always* read the user manual and should not exceed the limits. Even today that's good advice, maybe unnecessary but maybe the difference between a mighty beast computer and a smoking ruin computer.

Best Buy would not be my first choice. 😛



Good Evening,
Thanks for the reply. The Corsair was a recommendation again by BestBuy....when I first had problems with the original CYBERPOWER PSU died.
Its possible I hooked up the OOD power supply cable incorrectly from the OOD to the physical PSU unit.
As of today 5/30/2018 the system is running flawlessly. I of course do not have the OOD connected. Thermals are great even under load. No Q codes issues at all.
I believe I'll wait a bit for the wife to give me some more allowance... haha... then I'll start upgrading the system with new PSU, cables, maybe a new case for a updated look. Getting ready to file off the CYBERPOWER lettering off the side of this current case. Man what a disappointment that company was.

I really appreciate all the critiques and feedback.
Would anyone have any other PSU recommendations aside from Corsair.... anything they prefer?

Warmest regards,