How would I know if my CPU is fried. I had a problem with my motherboard not POST'ing, so I returned it for a new one. The new one is also not POST'ing, so obviously it is something else. All the standby power lights are on, and when I push the power button the system startup lights turn on, but that is all I get, I have to turn the power switch off before I can get the startup lights to fire again. The board makes no other sounds or indication as to what the problem may be, so I am at a loss. I am using the DFI LP UT nF4 SLI-D Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard, and an AMD 3500 CPU. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
some silly questions: is this a completly new build? are all the components new? are you installing a fresh sopy of xp, or are you installing an old drive with an existing copy on? have you setup master and slave corectly? are the system fans comming on, on startup? are there any beeps at startup? is there power going to every component? is the monitor turining on, and if so are there any errormessages? does the hdd led come on , on the front pannel of your case? is the cpu fan connected to the mobo? i know som eof the questions are stupid, but the problem could be a number of things, just need to narrow it down a bit!
I had a very, very similar problem not to long ago, and you know what it turned out to be? Dead graphics card, simple, you can't display anything without that obviously. Do you have a spare you can try by chance? Assuming eveything has power as stated by Jim, including you're graphics card if applicable, you may need to look at other potenital variables. For instance do you know you're ram is seated properly, compatable, and not dead (I know that sounds dumb but it's alluded me before), make sure your monitor is connected tightly. I don't think you're CPU is the problem as you would know it from you're mobo and probably wouldn't be getting anything (could be wrong). Either way there are three major things that can kill a CPU. 1) improper instilation, for instance improperly seated, bent pins, lever not shut. 2) The real killer, over heating, though you most certainly would have head beeping indicating you're CPU was frying if the cooler isn't seated properly and no thermal paste was used or it wasn't connected to the mobo via the system fan connector or something similar sounding (not saying you didn't do this just sometimes it happens to people). 3) ESD, Electric Static Discharge, you'll know it as you'll see the static and hear a little crack, that would definately be bad so think back. My bet is on the video card, if you have any way of testing it I recommend you do so.
Ok, Yes this is a completly new build. All componets are new. I would be installing a new copy of XP. One hard drive. Fans are not coming on at startup. No beeps at startup. I connected all the power wires that I could. No monitor, no error messages. HDD light just flashes then goes out. CPU fan is connected to mobo. I do belive my componets are seated properly, first thing I made sure of. I don't belive it is the video card, only because when I hit the power, nothing happens. No beeps, no lights other then a quick flash then nothing. I do not have spare parts to test with, unfortunately.
The front panel switches are a very common thing to set up wrong, I always goof the first time around as the mobo manual and the case design never correlate properly. So basically are you sure you have those front panel switches configured properly? Obviously the USB_1 and 2 don't matter at this point but the reset switch and pwr switch obviously do, you can't always go by color I've learned, check the mobo again and look to see if there is any way you could do it differently. I personally have the most trouble with the switches as, for one, like I've said there's almost never a correlation between the switches the case came with and the mobo's labels the should match up and it's usually not clear whether they go vertical, horizontal, whether you should cover the dummy pins, have the + end pointed this way and so on. Fortunately there's no harm with these switches being in the wrong place you can mess around. Just be remember what combo's don't work
What power supply are you using? While you don't really want to go with a power supply less than 350W (providing the 12V rail is enough) for any current Athlon64/Pentium setup, DFI calls for a minimum of 480W with 25A across the 12V rail. If you're not close to these specs, that's probably where you're running into trouble. Also, there's power and reset buttons on these DFI motherboards, so you should be able to test it without having it in a case.
Good point but I would think his fans would turn on at least, his psu would practically have to be dead for it to only handle lights.
hmm, so your not getting any power to the motherboard? does your psu have its own independant 0/l switch? i had similar problems last week when configuring my new system, but i was getting power to the main board. what psu is it? the front panel on/off is definetly connected to the pwr connecter on the motherboard?
okay, ive found a pdf manuel for your mobo, click on the link below, and scroll down to the first page of the second user guide ( page 17). this page shows you exactly how to connect your on/off button on the front pannel to the correct pins, because you said that there is a small light, i am convinced that you have got the pins mixed up (which is very easy to do as there 20 pins! atx-sw = power on and is pin 10. click this link, and scroll to the page 17 (which is the first page of the second user guide) http://us.dfi.com.tw/Upload/Manual/847505311.pdf hope thatthis sorts out your problem!
Big B is right, my power supply was too small, a friend came over and took a look at it, I was only running a PSU with a max of 480. We ran out and picked up a 550, and it worked perfectly. I did have a problem with my video card, some failure message that I didn't read fast enough, is there anyway to retrive a list of error messages?
Try hitting the Pause/Break key on the keyboard while it's running through the video card's BIOS. If there's a power connector on the video card, make sure it's connected. Additionally, make sure all 4 power connectors on that motherboard are hooked up: the 24-pin ATX connector, the 4-pin auxillary, the 4-pin molex, and the 4-pin floppy power connectors.
Nope, that's only necessary if you want to use a floppy drive. Leave it in a box to cut down on in-case clutter.
