Alright, so here's my lengthy story: I left my desktop off for a bit while I was visiting my parents at Christmas. Normally it stays on all the time, with only the occasional reboot. When i returned and tried to start it up, however, it wouldn't do anything. The fans came on, the lights came on, but no video, and no BIOS beeps. First suspecting the RAM, I tried removing some to see if one of the sticks was faulty. This didn't seem to help at all, although removing all of the RAM did cause the motherboard to beep, so I took that as a sign that at least that part was working. Swapping out other pieces didn't seem to do anything, either. Eventually I got really stumped and frustrated and thought that it might be the motherboard afterall, or perhaps the power supply. I didn't really want to mess with my roommates' machines to test this, so I took it over to a local computer repair place to let them use their spare parts for testing. The guy said he tried multiple PSU's and video cards, but none them worked. He concluded that it was the mobo (which was a Gigabyte board), and claimed that Gigabyte seemed pretty bad these days, and that he had diagnosed lots of faulty ones lately. I took his word for it and ordered a new mobo, this time an ASUS (my old favorite brand) P5Q SE Plus--a lighter, cheaper model that still supported all my parts. After installing it, however, the system still didn't boot, in the same exact fashion. Furiously perplexed, I tried once more to remove two of the sticks of RAM. Suddenly it booted. "F*%#", I noted. I then tried inserting those sticks back in the system. It booted. "WHAT the f*%#", I continued. Mentally exhausted from the whole deal, I just accepted this as "well, maybe that other board was faulty, or maybe not, but this one is working, so whatever." All was fine and dandy until this morning, when our power came back on after being out for around 6 hours due to a snow storm. The machine now refuses to boot--no video, no beeps. Having had other strange issues (in games, mostly) for a while now, I immediately suspected one of the sticks of RAM of being the real culprit, one that only acted faulty every once in a while. With this in mind, I commenced a bunch of RAM-swapping. At one point in this procedure, it booted. Attempting to confirm this find, I re-inserted the sticks that I'd removed. Well, now it doesn't boot anymore, no matter what RAM I put in there. "Maybe it's the graphics card?" It sure would be cool if I could test that theory out, except I discovered that, given the location of the plastic tab that must be pushed in order to release the card from the PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot, the surrounding objects on the motherboard, and the immense bulk of my EVGA card, it's utterly impossible to fit my finger in there to release it. Awesome, my video card is permanently coupled with the motherboard. Alright, so I'm stumped. Maybe someone here could offer some advice? My system specs are as follows: ASUS P5Q SE Plus motherboard (formerly a Gigabyte board) EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX 4 sticks of 1gb Ballistix Tracer RAM from Crucial.com (yes, I know 32bit Windows can only see around 3.2gb of it, but it was cheap at the time and I figured "Why not") Sound Blaster Fatality PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750-Watt PSU (it was rated as one of the better PSU's and met the wattage requirements on its various voltage rails for my GeForce card)
I may have an small idea about what may be up, i used to have problems with my older ballistix ram - Turned out that the really old sticks needed 2.3v at stock! Once I got into the bios settings using just one stick (thats all it used to boot on) and ramped up the voltage - then re-installed the other three sticks voila! - It was finding this that made me think my new Gigabyte mobo was faulty as well - as it turns out the most mine can give to RAM is 2.2v, since then my gigabyte has been sweet as a nut When you get into your bios what are your memory voltages set at? On a side note that ram I had was faulty also - make use of the crucial lifetime guarantee - just call them say you are getting errors on all of them and chances are they'll replace the set as they only test random RMA's
Great suggestion by ferg. Check the specs for your RAM and enter them manually into the BIOS along with the voltages. Motherboards usually default to around 1.8v, while your ram is probably recommended at 2.2v.
In the first instance it seems that it was a power supply problem. ALso it is advisable to check RAM compatibility with your system (you can do this online) before replacing or adding new RAM.
