[mattbird55]

Hi all, im a bit of a novice building pc's and am having a bit of a nightmare with my latest one... have put everything in place (i think) but it wont start.. no power at all.. not a fan whiring or a beep sounding.. i have checked the psu and it works fine on my old pc. its a chunky 550 watt too that cost a few bob so should easily be powerful enough. have checked all conections. have taken out all wires and put them back again etc etc but still no power, no post, no nothing. have even taken the on switch off my old pc and tried it on the new one and that doesnt work either.
its a gigabyte motherboard that supports both dual and quad chips. mine is a dual 2.4 so is compatible. 2gb ram is 6400 which is also compatible with mobo.

have inserted power connectors into the dvd drive, hdd, graphics card, and two into the mobo (one big long one and one 4 pin one). There is also a six pin connector coming out of the psu that i cant find a home for. any idea what this is for? the manual is very vague and of course there is no GB phone number to ring. have inserted the cpu fan cable too i might add.

im guessing that either ive done sometyhing very basic wrong or else my mobo was dead on arival. any ideas??

thanks in advance

[link590o]

i don't think you've done anything wrong. i think the manufacturers have. you might have a DOA board. dead on arrival. and rather unfortunate. you would do well to send it back and get a new one.

just to be doubly sure it's the mobo, although i'm pretty positive, detach everything from it except power and the monitor. see if it reaches the bios. if still nothing, dead mobo. from there, you know what to do. send it back, get a new one and try again.

it's all part of the computer building genre. the one thing you always have to expect is that you have at least one part that is dead on arrival. it's not easy to know what's dead and what isn't. you just have to try and figure it out step by step.

i pray that the rest of it goes as planned.
regards,
link

[mattbird55]

found the problem. been using the wrong bloody screws on the motherboard and it was shorting on the case. D'oh!! anyways its booting now and i have a host of other problems. firstly it has crashed a few times randomly. just taken the cpu cooler off and re-installed it again as it didnt seem to fit as snug as it could.. it seems a little tighter now although some of the paste came off it and i dont have any to replace on hand. how important is that paste stuff??? id say about 70 % of it is still on it?
System has been running for 15 mins now tho without crashing so hopefully that problem might be solved too.
Also no sound? re-installed drivers but still no sound? am thinking my sound blaster card may be conflicting with the onboard one some how. will look into that now.
Thanks link

[link590o]

hm....that's interesting. don't think i've ever heard of the "wrong screws" problem before...i'll be sure to keep that one in mind for future reference in case i get some problems.

i'd say you're right, there's a problem with the sound card. reseat it perhaps and reboot? i'm not sure what else you can do except double check compatibility with the mobo. make sure it can recognize it and supports it.

as for the paste. yeah it is somewhat important. it's what transfers heat to the heat sink and fan. without paste, your components will fry themselves in a matter of 15 seconds. but as long as you have most of it on there, it should be fine. it just might not be running as cool as it could be.

in the worst case, you can just buy some paste online for like...5 bucks. its not very expensive. just be careful with applying it. make sure you read the instructions on how to remove the old paste and apply the new. if you're lazy or interested, i can tell you if you like.

[mattbird55]

when i had the case it came with 3 different types of screw. some of em are like stilts with a hole in the end. you use these on the case to give the mobo a few mm of free space from the case and you screw the normal screws into the top of these to secure the mobo. didnt say any of this in the manual but it does make sense when u think about it. will get some more paste when i have chance.. got the sound working too. even tho id installed the drivers, windows still had the old one as the primary device so changed that and hey presto!! shiny new pc!