[karatenerd]

My friend has ordered a bunch of new computer parts enabling him to basically make a new computer (except for hard drive, sound card, and cd drives). Last night i started helping him put in his new hardware into a brand new case he bought. The new equipment is as follows:

MOTHERBOARD:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813186082
Foxconn NF4K8AC-RS-1.0 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard

COMPUTER CASE:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811145066
POWMAX Bio II CP601-1 Black All Metal Construction (SGCC) ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450W Single Fan Power Supply

PROCESSOR:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103537
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 1GHz FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor

RAM:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820145480
CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory

VIDEO CARD:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814127147
MSI NX6600GT-TD128E Geforce 6600GT 128MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card

I will not list the other hardware because i believe it is irrelevant to the problems we are having. When we switch the power box on in the back, all the fans turn on, and sometimes the powerbox flickers on and off. We dont see or hear any evidence that the computer has even begun to start up or begin processing anything. Nothing on the monitor, no beeps, nothing. One thing we will note is that we could not figure out how to plug in the front USB, front audio, etc. (except for the power button) to the motherboard. I don't think that has anything to do with the problem, but i thought i would say list that anyway.

Below are some high quality images of our computer setup. The power box is not present, though if you need to see the power box set up, we would be more than happy to take another photograph.

http://64.202.163.80...uter_help/1.jpg
http://64.202.163.80...uter_help/2.jpg
http://64.202.163.80...uter_help/3.jpg
http://64.202.163.80...uter_help/4.jpg
http://64.202.163.80...uter_help/5.jpg

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

[Advertisements]

The connection of front audio/USB/firewire ports is irrelevant. It just won't work and in the case of Audio you'll have no sound at all from the back.

Take bits out to get it to beep at you. Take the memory out, the graphics out and the processor out. Take the battery out to clear the CMOS. And try another power supply just in case.

[Neil Jones]

The connection of front audio/USB/firewire ports is irrelevant. It just won't work and in the case of Audio you'll have no sound at all from the back.

Take bits out to get it to beep at you. Take the memory out, the graphics out and the processor out. Take the battery out to clear the CMOS. And try another power supply just in case.

[karatenerd]

We tried what you said. We took at the processor, battery, graphics card, ram, everything. the only thing hooked up to the motherboard was the power. Power was stable. After that we tried putting in the battery, and processor, 1 stick of 512 ram, and the graphics card. Still no image on the screen or beep. One thing we did notice was that the hard drive attempts to boot up when its NOT hooked up to the motherboard; however, it fails to boot when connected to the motherboard. We are starting to have speculations that the motherboard is faulty. Any suggestions?

[Neil Jones]

The hard drive will spin up when you turn the power on, this is intended behaviour. It won't actually boot off the drive until after the board has counted memory, looked for drives, etc.

Now if you've eliminated everything (hence why I suggested take those bits out), then the only thing it can be now is the motherboard. Virtually all boards will beep if there's no memory or video installed and a general rule of thumb is if its not even doing that, chances are the board is actually dead and all you can do is send it back for a replacement.

[karatenerd]

well, i got the front power botton to work, finaly, and hooked the motherboard up to an old [bleep] 200W power supply, nothing plugged into mobo cept power. the supply is so old its only 20 pin and doesnt have a 4 pin supply for the cpu, but it should be enough to get the mobo to beep. manual says it will run with 20 pin.

neway, the thing didnt beep so i guess ill give newegg a call tomorrow and send it off to get replaced. thx for ur help here fellas.

[warriorscot]

Foxconn boards are pretty unreliable, and powerbox is called the PSU for future reference, did you remember to put spacers between the case and motherboard so they didnt touch(just in case you get new board and it was you who broke it the first time) and if it happens again it may be the PSU cheap case with cheapo generic PSU = very bad things.