7 beeps of doom after cpu/gpu install

ALl my parts ame in and I did the following
power drain and disassemble
3 pipe heatsink
did not touch present 680m
installed new 680m and heatsink
tightened all heatsinks
tried to bench boot meaning having HDD in, lcd cable, power button
7 beeps
installed original 3720qm, same type of bench boot, it booted to both my msata and normal ssd in two tests.
cleaned cpu repasted since well we are going back to that i guess.
bench booted, 7 beeps.
CPUs were installed in correct singular orientation and locked to the right with the screw.
frustrated, removed second video card left original still untouched, same condition.

Possible errors, perhaps I have not the absolute minimum required of reassembly like i MUST install my keyboard? I was avoiding a complete reassembly to test incase I had bad luck. Although by now I could have just totally reassembled.

I've always cleaned my cpus with a bit of alcohol to paste could that somehow be a harbinger of doom now?

basically its acting like its either defiant that all must be reassembled or i some how smoked two CPUs or my motherboard magically died. My bios is/was A09.

any suggestions of where I could be blatantly wrong or some other things to try would be appreciated. I guess I should have left it alone.

 

Try pulling the CMOS battery and doing a power drain to reset Bios after installing new CPU.

 

did that a few times, she's being a cruel mistress

 

You don't need to have anything else attached to the motherboard. It's smart to leave it totally disassembled until you know everything works. The way you did it is how I always do it.

Tried a blind flash yet? If not, that might be your ticket to bliss. Just don't interrupt the process. It can take up to a minute and a half for the beeping to start, and it will beep for 3 or 4 minutes, so be patient. When the blind flash is done the machine will shut down and upon restart is will usually beep 5 times on the first boot attempt.

Blind BIOS Recovery process for all M18x R1 in case of corrupt BIOS (If you own an M18x R2 the process is identical, you simply use a different file. See link below.)

[ Download M18R2.hdr]

 

I let it sit for hours at blind flash, it appears to never have accessed the USB stick (used a cheapie 2.0 one) in fat32 with the hdr file, didnt even seem to check it. was in the sata combo port.

 

do you need to have the LCD attached though correct? the minimum is that and the power button i figured.

 

Try another USB 2.0 stick to rule out some weirdness, but not accessing the stick for a blind flash is typically a signal that something died on the mobo. I've had a few of them do this for no explainable reason and could never recover from it. In fact, I had a new M18xR2 mobo that was DOA with the same symptoms about 6 weeks ago. Parts-People had to exchange it on RMA. Blind flash would not work on that one either.

Yes. The only "external" things I connect during testing are the I/O daughterboard, (which is usually never disconnected unless you are replacing the motherboard,) LVDS cable for the LCD and the power button switch. I use a USB keyboard during testing prior to reassembly.

 

thanks, I feel less idiotic due to the fact you've also experience a board go stupid. I will try another stick and blind flash using the ao3 file you probably refer to. Even if it doesnt try to flash, imassuming the USB stickshould at least blink a couple times. Which it doesnt.
It did this with both processors, even putting it back to the nothing done state doesnt get it going.

I will give it another go today, if it fails I will not replace mobo and part her out to save the other ones.

 

Boards will do strange things on rare occaisions. I had a M17x R4 that failed a BIOS update. I tried to blind flash, which failed, and the computer had zero power. The alien head didn't light up and I couldn't turn on the damn thing no matter what I did.
Last ditch effort: find a small USB, like 2GB or smaller, format it FAT or FAT32, delete everything off the drive except for the BIOS image, and try flashing with that. If it doesn't work, then I guess you will be parting her out, though I would personally find another motherboard.