I recently bought some parts to start my first build, however after assembling everything, the computer refuses to boot. here are the parts.
Xion Solaris Black/Green ATX Mid-Tower Case with 450 watt power supply
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB Hard Drive
Patriot 2048MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Memory
ECS A780GM-A Motherboard
Dvd drive
When everything is connected it, with a monitor and keyboard,mouse it does not boot. The fans connected directly to the board work. I tried changing the slot the ram was connected to but that doesn't work, i also cleared the CMOS, but nothing happened. I also tried a 512 mb 533 mhz ram chip but still no booting.I even rechecked all the connections,jumpers and the CPU but nothing happened. I attached the wires for the case i saw in a picture from a post here on Afterdawn, here's the link.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/677298
I would really appreciate any help. Its been 3 weeks and i don't know what to do.
Thanks for your help everyone.
I don't like ECS boards much, they're hardly known for their quality, I'd suspect it's a faulty motherboard. You should also change the PSU ASAP, it's a deathtrap. An Antec Earthwatts 380W should suffice.
I'm sure I replied to this thread before, perhaps not...
Looks like a "strip everything out and start with a bare board" scenario is the way to go here? That's what I would do until it starts beeping at me ;)
And another potentially perfect piece of hardware hits the landfill ;) I mean really.. that picture somebody posted tells me nothing about where which wire actually goes... You need to follow the diagram in the book precisely, or google the motherboard manual if you don't have one.. I am always being given "scrap" hardware because "It's dead".. and there is nothing wrong with 80% of it apart from user error and a complete lack of a logical fault finding approach... Even computers which have sat in back yards in the elements for a few years are sitting here working. normally a bad stick of ram or a duff graphics card.. or maybe just a badly seated agp card.... Does the power cable work?.. are you sure?? is the plug in???.. how about the switch on the psu???? is the socket switched on????? basics.. but they catch me out from time to time. The number of non starters I have repaired by swapping the mains cable after pulling it all apart twice are stupid.
Basic checks over.. power all present and correct?.. now lets move inside.
Sam.. do you remember where I posted that link to the psu connector and which pins to connect to test it will start? We need to rule out a duff psu somehow or we will be back with a new mobo and same problem in a few days...
Remove everything from the board.. ram.. cards.. cpu.. the lot.. psu connections and power switch connector and power led cable are all that are needed.. fire it up and if the board has an onboard beeper it will start making noises... usually quite a lot of noise. If not the psu will come to life at the very least.. Wham in the cpu and you will get lots of beeps.. on and on and on.. seems to be standard "no ram" signal these days.. then add one bit at a time until it stops booting.. and you have your culprit....
And that's how the recyclers do it. Mind you.. we do tend to have plenty of spare parts lying around.. especially every sort of PC PSU known to man... which we test on known good systems so we know they work.
