X230 doesn’t torn on every time

[Garlic Bread]

I am trying to upgrade my X230 with a custom motherboard that has an i7-3612QM soldered on to it, and I am having little success. I am on my third board now, having returned the first two to various AliExpress sellers for not boosting properly and having an issue where the PC would only turn on sometimes. The third board I got seems to work fine in that the CPU boosts properly and benches as expected from the a 3612QM, but it still has this annoying issue where it will sometimes not load into BIOS or OS but just sit there with its fans spinning and requiring a hard reset to get going.

Seeing as the boot issue has persisted through all of the boards I have tried I’m thinking that I may be doing something wrong. Has any of you guys who use a modified board such as this one encountered this issue, and did you manage to solve it? I have already tried to swap all parts including the CMOS battery, I run the system off of a 90 watt power brick, and all of the system self-tests passes without issue.

I pay the equivalent of 100 dollars worth of import taxes every time I roll the dice on a new board which is not refunded when I return them, and seeing as this one actually works well when it boots I would love to make it work.

[dr_st]

My X220, which I got used back in 2013, from the first day that I had it, exhibits this symptom where every once in a while, from power-off/hibernation, after pressing the power-button, it gets stuck with a blank screen, and does not proceed to POST.

I noticed the following:
1. When it happens, there is no fan noise, no screen backlight, only power LED is on
2. It seems to occur more frequently after changing the power configuration (moving from docked to undocked, or from AC to DC)
3. When it happens, a single press of the power button turns the machine off, and it ALWAYS boots correctly on the next power-on.

Because of the above, I am not sure the cause is similar to what you are experiencing, but it may suggest something about these X-series, since I did not see this behavior with any other Thinkpad of mine.

In your case, what is the % of successful boots?

[TPFanatic]

Is the BIOS up to date? I am curious if they ship the boards with up to date BIOS or if it has something old.
I have a X230 with 3610QE and 1440p converter and it boots reliably, it's running the 1vyra1n BIOS.

[Garlic Bread]

It boost correctly about 80% of the time, which is not good enough IMO.

The board shipped with an ancient BIOS, but I switched to 1vyrain in my attempt to fix it. The problem is unchanged whether I use 1vyrain, the latest official Lenovo BIOS, the 1vyprep one or the one that came with the board, which leads me to suspect a hardware problem.