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pradeep1

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 4, 2005
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just got a bunch of components from Newegg today for a cheap system. Put them together, but the computer won't fire up. I shorted the green wire on the 350 W generic PSU and it works. I even substituted another better quality 350 W PSU and it still won't fire up. When I hit the power button at the back of the PSU, it just whines and nothing comes on, especially the little light on the motherboard telling me that it's getting power.

Here is what I have in the box:

1. ASUS A7V600-X Socket A
2. AMD Mobile Athlon XP-M 2500+ (45W) Barton 266MHz FSB
3. Rosewill 256MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) [ 2 sticks ]
4. GIGABYTE Neon Cooler 7-Pro GH-ED721-MF 92mm Ball Blue LED Light Cooling Fan
5. Lite-On DVD-R/RW
6. 3.5" floppy drive
7. 80 GB Western Digital HDD

Nothing in there is a severe power draw.

I am suspecting that the motherboard is DOA. The PSU does whine, which makes me feel like there is something else going on. The whine does not stop until I turn off the power switch on the PSU. I did notice one thing. When I flicked the switch once, I saw the LED on my CPU fan come on. I then did this a few times, with varying amounts of time between flicks, and each time the CPU fan would move one or two rotations, but nothing else after that.

A forum user on Anandtech said that the motherboard may have a grounding problem.

So how do I ground the motherboard?

What do you guys think?

Thanks,

Pradeep
 
To check to see if you are shorting out, recheck all of your mounting into your case. Make sure that none of the screws are touching any part of the motherboard except for the mounting bracket holes. Double check nothing else is making contact with your board that can be causing a short either, IE any metal support bars for your case maybe hanging down.

Definetly sounds like that could be the culprit. If everything looks fine and you even tried resetting the motherboard on the stands, then I would think about RMAing the board
 
-make sure you dont have any extra motherboard standoffs in the wrong place that is shorting out the motherboard. Also make sure that no other wires were cut by sheet metal edges and are now shorted out (e.g wires to front of case)

-try clearing the cmos via jumper (see motherboard manual for procedure for your model)

-triple check that the ram and vid card and everything else is plugged in correctly. Sometimes both vid cards and ram need more force than you think to get em snugged in. (please dont smash the crap out of em... just make sure)

-you didn't power on the system for even ONE SECOND without a heatsink on that cpu, did you? Athlon XP's WILL toast that fast.

-you didnt slop on either half a pound of, or no thermal interface material at all, so that the cpu either got shorted out from the goop or just died from not being able to transfer the heat effectively?

-disconnect the non-essential (for a basic power-up) hardware (floppy drive, cd-rom, hard drive and one stick of the ram) from both the motherboard and the power supply to see if one of them is the culprit. things can have a short in em that can cause havok....

Let us know how it goes.... good luck
 
Doh! I figured it out. The motherboard was touching the case at one point where I had forgotten to put a mounting spacer. Obvious mistake. It was a grounding problem. Thank you both for your timely answers. It is funny how you can make a mistake and convince yourself that is not the mistake. I only discovered my problem after taking everything out.

Pradeep
 
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