I have an HTPC that I built back in September of 2013 with the following specs:
- CPU: Intel i3-3245
- Motherboard: ASRock H77M
- Case: LIAN LI PC-C50B
- Power Supply: OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W
- RAM: Kingston HyperX XMP Blu Red Series 8GB
- Hard disk: SAMSUNG 840 MZ-7TD120BW
- Optical: Pioneer BDR-208DBK
- Keyboard: Logitech K400
- OS: Windows 7 x64
Overall it's been a decent living room PC and ran fine up until last night. I couldn't get it to wake up so I hard reset it and now I get a series of 3 short beeps, followed by 3 short beeps, then the power light blinks and this continues forever.
Here is a very short video of the issue: https://vine.co/v/Oqpx32lTqni
I've tried:
- cleaning all the dust out of the PC, fans, heatsinks, grills
- pulling the RAM and booting (this would cause 3 long beeps)
- trying the RAM in different slots, one at a time
- clearing the CMOS
- connecting a PS2 keyboard
- disconnecting HDMI and using DVI
- disconnecting DVI and using VGA
I haven't found many similar cases of these beep codes, most people seem to be getting the 3 long beeps for RAM errors. According to biosflash.com these short beeps could be one of the following:
- 3x short beeps: Base 64K RAM failure
- 6x short beeps: Keyboard controller Gate A20 error
Unfortunately I don't know what either of those would be caused by. I'm leaning towards motherboard, but I suppose it could possibly be RAM or CPU too. I think I have some different RAM that will work so I'm going to try that tonight. I don't have a spare LGA1155 CPU.
I've tried to contact ASRock support but haven't heard from them yet and don't expect them to be all that helpful.
Does anyone have a better idea what it might be? Or run into this before?