No Chime, No Boot

[sgtbluefire]

Hi, i have looked at several forums with similar issues, but I can seem to find out what the problem is and I hope maybe someone here can give me some ideas. I have a Mac Pro Mid 2010 A1289. The specs are...

3.33 GHz 6 Core Xeon W3680
1TB SSD
32gb RAM
Nvidia Quadro 4000 graphics card

It was running Yosemite 10.10.5

So, after the long New Year weekend I came in and turned it on but I got no display nor did I get the chime. The white power light stays on, the fans are humming, I removed the side panel and even the graphics card has a green light and its fan is running too. So I force a shut down and reboot. a small red light on the CPU Tray flashed and then nothing. I was back at the beginning. I tried to reset the PRAM, but with no chime or display, I don't think it was effective. I thought maybe the ram had gone bad, so I took out each one till i had none left and even still there was no change. I know the white light should flash is there is no ram, but it remain solid. I even tried booting it without the graphics card, just to see if I could hear a chime, but I could not. From what I've read this means I have a Bad CUP or a Bad PSU. I've tried putting in my old snow leopard disk to see if it would boot from that, but it wasn't very effective. Ive double checks all the connections and made sure everything was clean and snug. What do you think? Thanks in Advance!

 

[bsbeamer]

Hi, i have looked at several forums with similar issues, but I can seem to find out what the problem is and I hope maybe someone here can give me some ideas. I have a Mac Pro Mid 2010 A1289. The specs are...

3.33 GHz 6 Core Xeon W3680
1TB SSD
32gb RAM
Nvidia Quadro 4000 graphics card

It was running Yosemite 10.10.5

So, after the long New Year weekend I came in and turned it on but I got no display nor did I get the chime. The white power light stays on, the fans are humming, I removed the side panel and even the graphics card has a green light and its fan is running too. So I force a shut down and reboot. a small red light on the CPU Tray flashed and then nothing. I was back at the beginning. I tried to reset the PRAM, but with no chime or display, I don't think it was effective. I thought maybe the ram had gone bad, so I took out each one till i had none left and even still there was no change. I know the white light should flash is there is no ram, but it remain solid. I even tried booting it without the graphics card, just to see if I could hear a chime, but I could not. From what I've read this means I have a Bad CUP or a Bad PSU. I've tried putting in my old snow leopard disk to see if it would boot from that, but it wasn't very effective. Ive double checks all the connections and made sure everything was clean and snug. What do you think? Thanks in Advance!

Had a similar machine at a client's office years ago that ended up being a bad PSU. Had Apple replace at that time. It CAN be a time consuming install, but it's not much more diffucult than messing around with most other things inside the case.

Can you check your GPU in another machine?
Have you removed everything that is not "necessary" from PCIe slots?
Have you removed all disks except startup disk?
Have you unplugged all cables except for power?

There was a time that some of the boards for the CPU were going bad in that client's office, but I do not recall the timeframe or details around that. Believe they were 2,1 machines and they were replaced by Apple.

 

[sgtbluefire]

Had a similar machine at a client's office years ago that ended up being a bad PSU. Had Apple replace at that time. It CAN be a time consuming install, but it's not much more diffucult than messing around with most other things inside the case.

Can you check your GPU in another machine?
I do not have another Mac Pro to test the GPU out in, I did however, already have a new GPU on the way. A Nvidia Geforce GTX 680 that i was going to install, but I know i need to install the drivers first, but I can't do that as of yet.
Have you removed everything that is not "necessary" from PCIe slots?
Yes
Have you removed all disks except startup disk?
Yes
Have you unplugged all cables except for power?
Yes

There was a time that some of the boards for the CPU were going bad in that client's office, but I do not recall the timeframe or details around that. Believe they were 2,1 machines and they were replaced by Apple.

This machine is for a client as well, We normally deal with macbooks and this is our first Mac Pro. Thanks for the quick reply too.

 

[ActionableMango]

I would follow the steps in the Service Manual's table starting on page 42.

Also there are many, many diagnostic LEDs so you really need to say which one. These are all described in the service manual too.

 

[h9826790]

Few more possibilities other than bad PSU or CPU.

1) the CPU tray is dead (usually North bridge is the issue)
2) the logic board is faulty.
3) the battery on the logic board need to be replaced
4) bad GPU

All these can cause power on, no chime, no boot.

 

[sgtbluefire]

I would follow the steps in the Service Manual's table starting on page 42.

Also there are many, many diagnostic LEDs so you really need to say which one. These are all described in the service manual too.

i looked up the manual on apples site, but it never mentioned anything about the led's. however, the led i mention with the flash of red is labeled as dsi510 on the CPU tray.
[doublepost=1514929067][/doublepost]

Few more possibilities other than bad PSU or CPU.

1) the CPU tray is dead (usually North bridge is the issue)
2) the logic board is faulty.
3) the battery on the logic board need to be replaced
4) bad GPU

All these can cause power on, no chime, no boot.

those all sound very very bad and expensive....

 

[h9826790]

i looked up the manual on apples site, but it never mentioned anything about the led's. however, the led i mention with the flash of red is labeled as dsi510 on the CPU tray.
[doublepost=1514929067][/doublepost]
those all sound very very bad and expensive....

Except the battery. So I will definitely try that before anything else.

 

[DeltaMac]

You would need the service manual, not the user guide.
You can search for it with the name of the service manual "macpro_mid2010_mid2012.pdf"

 

[Synchro3]

i looked up the manual on apples site, but it never mentioned anything about the led's. however, the led i mention with the flash of red is labeled as dsi510 on the CPU tray.
[doublepost=1514929067][/doublepost]
those all sound very very bad and expensive....

The LED DSI510 in my Mac Pro lit, in my case it was a broken Northbridge Heatsink rivet: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ng-broken-northbridge-heatsink-rivet.2046462/

 

[sgtbluefire]

You would need the service manual, not the user guide.
You can search for it with the name of the service manual "macpro_mid2010_mid2012.pdf"

Reading the manual now
[doublepost=1514930980][/doublepost]

The LED DSI510 in my Mac Pro lit, in my case it was one broken Northbridge Heatsink rivet: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ng-broken-northbridge-heatsink-rivet.2046462/

Yes, that looks just like mine. But I don't have a hex head driver long enough to remove the heat sink right now. I'll update y'all on my progress once I get another screw driver.

 

[Synchro3]

You don't have to remove the heatsink, just look the underside of the CPU tray whether the two rivets are still there.

 

[sgtbluefire]

You don't have to remove the heatsink, just look the underside of the CPU tray whether the two rivets are still there.

I see two black ones that are similar in your picture. My thought is that maybe the thermal paste might have dried out, but I'm not sure if it would cause this....

 

[sgtbluefire]

I finally removed the heat sink and the thermal paste was dry, but replacing that did help anything. I'm going to see if we can send it back, because replacing the whole CPU tray will cost almost as much as what I paid for this... thanks for everyone's help!

 

[arash99]

hi did you find the solution for this issue?

 

[sgtbluefire]

hi did you find the solution for this issue?

unfortunatly we did not. thankfully we still had time to return it. we had bought it from eBay. We actually bought another one that was a year older and everything mostly worked out. still having a few other issues but nothing as bad as this was.

 

[arash99]

did you do anything to the mac pro
such as replacing parts or anything to diagnose the issue

 

[sgtbluefire]

did you do anything to the mac pro
such as replacing parts or anything to diagnose the issue

yes, i mentioned that in the first posting. we figured it was a bad tray and since we had the option of returning it, we went with that.