Power Surge, Resurrection Advice

[purg3d]

Older 939 system, power fail.
3 beeps, once in a blue moon video works long enough to freeze.
Replaced psu - no change.
Replaced video - no change.
Took out RAM - single beeps . -- . -- .

Strapped for cash, and I'm no good at diagnosis without swapping parts. Shooting in the dark, I'm guessing it's a motherboard issue. Any thoughts?

 

[engiNURD]

your probably right.
when you took out the ram, was anything else connected to the system?
do you get beeps without a vidcard nor ram installed?
what mobo is it?
what model was the original psu?
what other psu model did you try?
what model ram?

 

[purg3d]

Thanks for the reply, enginurd.

With everything out of the system, I get the same beeps (long beep, pause, long beep, repeat) as with just the RAM removed.

* Athlon 64 3400+ Socket 939 w/ AMD OEM 4-piper Opteron heatsink
* ECS KN1 Lite Motherboard (nForce4 Ultra, PCI-E, 4 SATA, 4 DIMM)
2x512MB Mushkin DDR400 CAS 2.5-3-3-6
* Sapphire ATi HD 3450
* Ultra X-Finity (2.0) 500w SLi ready PSU

Replaced the PSU with LOGISYS Computer PS480X2 480W ATX12V Power Supply
and the video with a Sapphire ATi HD 3650

Really thinking it's the perfect opportunity to move to the land of DDR2. Either way, I'm looking for a solution in the "I eat my cereal with a fork" price range. Keeping an eye out for a cheap AM2 board in the mean time.

 

[engiNURD]

DDR2? don't bother. Prices have doubled in the past month. Go for a DDR3 system. There are cheap AM3 boards.

That is one crappy PSU. Although it should still power your barebone bench test, just for shits and giggles, try a better quality PSU (Corsair, Antec, etc).

ECS boards aren't the greatest, so it wouldn't surprise me if the board is toast. You could also try a different stick of RAM thats known to be working.

If you'd like a build suggestion, please answer the questions in the sticky.