[jeffp]

Hi All,

This is my first posting, so please bear with me!

I'm beginning to doubt my ability to build PC's. I have built many in the past, but this is really confusing me.

Just bought an Asus A8S-X motherboard and Athlon 64 3200+ processor.

I have the motherboard, processor and heatsink and 1 gig RAM all installed in the case. PC powers to all the fans, but nothing going to display. I have used different PCI display cards in here which worked in other PC's.

Am I doing something wrong? No beeping, no nothing! It used to be easy, but now it's going horribly wrong!


Thanks
Jeff

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I neglected to mention, that I have tried this mobo with 2 working PSU's - one 350w and one 430w (i believe!)

Hope this helps,

Thanks,

Jeff

[jeffp]

I neglected to mention, that I have tried this mobo with 2 working PSU's - one 350w and one 430w (i believe!)

Hope this helps,

Thanks,

Jeff

[jeffp]

Does the video card "have" to be PCI Express? I am using a PCI graphics card in one of the PCI slots.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks
Jeff

[VeedeeBee]

Jeff,

Interesting looking board, just downloaded the manual. If your PCI GPU cards are 1 to 2 years old they'll be PCI-eXpress cards anyway. Make sure that the card is in the Black PCI slot, that is the one nearest the CPU and is the PCI x16 slot for your motherboard.

If that doesn't work, just check the next few questions on the display.

Does the green/red/orage power on light come on on the display?
Are you running the display from a separate power source?

Hope that helps, from the Union Jack, another Brit. The guys here are great and much more experienced than me. If I can't help I'm sure that someone else can.

Gluck Mate

[jeffp]

hey there, thanks for reply.

definately a pci rather than pci-express card. monitor ok and separate power source. spoke to tech support from site where bought from, sending back as it could be faulty mobo/processor or both. let's hope so!

[VeedeeBee]

Sending it back might not be the cure if your GPU cards are not PCI express. Are they Video editing GPU's like Matrox or something?

Very unusual to find Gaming cards in anything but PCI Express or AGP, I think the last PCI type card I had was a Guillemard (???) card on an EISA/PCI slot in 1996 !

Good luck anyway mate.

[bmwboy]

Sometimes there is a setting in the BIOS that needs to be edited to enable PCI cards, but, that is pointless in this case due to the fact that you can't see the screen!

--bmwboy

[VeedeeBee]

I think that BMW boy is right, it's a new board and I wonder if the BIOS isn't set to seek the next device (PCI) slot if no PCI-X card is installed (autodetect), or if no card is in the PCI-X slot. You may have to borrow a PCI-X card, re-set the BIOS, extract the PCI-X card, install the PCI card and then go from there.

Yes, I found loads of new PCI VGA cards on searching the internet but I don't understand why you'd use the older PCI type card on a new machine, the handbook mentions the need to set the primary graphics adapter in the advance BIOS settings between PCI express and PCI, so BMW boy is right.


Good luck with this, especially of you have the same problems on the replacement board.

Regards


VeedeeBee

[jeffp]

Cheers, was planning on using an existing PCI card until I could afford to buy a new PCI-X card. I had a really good AGP card which I was going to use, but there are no slots for it!! ;-)

Technology moves so quickly, hard and expensive to keep up to date!

Jeff

[VeedeeBee]

Sorry about the AGP card, I've got a surplus FX5700LE too now that my K7N420 has died (four red LEDs for those MSI board users who understand).

You can get very cheap PCI X cards now, my current one is a GFX6600GT (these should be very cheap now)which is just enough for good gameplay on my FPS and my son's LEGO starwars (the reason for the overheating) death of my old NForce board.

Incidentally, never had any trouble installing cards on that machine as the onboard VGA was quite adequate (for its time) for initially setting things up. That's why it was so hard to let go of that machine as it and XP Pro recovered itself so many times after its apparent death that its resilience kept me trying to recover it.

In fact, even when I had some teething troubles with my current machine I was able to tether kit to it to it to try out components (the DVD drives failed twice) to see where the fault was (motherboard or DVD).

Good luck with your replacement. I was a little short sighted getting my RS480M2 board, lovely kit socket 939 on an MSI board but I should have paid attention to the details as it din't have a game port an an RS232 port. So I've had to USB my WACOM tablet with a converter (found thanks to help from GtoG) and am still in need of a Gameport connector for a joystick.

Life is full of compromises for us away from the bleeding edge, on the upside some of the old kit we use can be quite nice, my WACOM tablet, Mitsubishi CRT and old sidewinder joystick are still decent devices with 9 years, 5 years and 9 years service so far.