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comp starts but no video.

L

lostone510

Member
Hello everyone. im helping a friend out put his comp in a new case. the problem im having is that the comp starts now, but thers no video. there are things that have been added to it. The comp started out with a 2 dvd drives, a 80g hd, its a p4 2000mhz, with a aopen ax45-v mobo, a 256 mem stick, and a 3dforce2mx-64m vid card with one fan. This is all running off of a 300w power supply. Now theres an extra 160g hd, 9 led lights in the case, there is also 2 more sticks of memory one is a 256 stick the other is a 512 stick, with 4 extra led case fans. im wondering if its the power supply is enough with all the extras in it now. The mobo powers up along with all the fans. the only thing is that i get no video feed. so i dont know what else i should try. I thank you in advance for any help you can provide.
 
If that PSU is not a very high quality unit, it's very likely that you simply have too much running in that case for it to provide power to everything properly. Unplug everything that you don't absolutely need and try again (i.e. only connect the CPU, Heat Sink, one stick of RAM, Video card, and primary hard disk).

If that works properly, start plugging more components in (one at a time) until it no longer works, turning the computer off between steps so that you don't short circuit anything. At that point, you'll know that either the PSU is being overloaded, or the last component you connected doesn't work. Take out the last item and plug something similar in to see if it will boot. If so, the previous component is possibly bad and may need some more testing. If not, then the PSU is overloaded and you'll need something better before you can run all of that hardware together in the computer.


edit: I just ran the specs you listed through a power supply wattage calculator, and without plugging in ANY PCI or USB peripherals, you're looking at a minimum requirement of 308 Watts from a good quality PSU (most cheap PSU's can provide their 'listed' amount for short times, but not all the time). So my guess is that you either need to drop some of the goodies, or get a better PSU. But try what I said previously first. 🙂
 
i just tried what you suggested. the thing is there is still no video coming through.the mobo still powers up. the only things that im running is the things that the comp started out with. Im wondering if it could be the vid card shorted out. i would take other parts to swap and see. but im out of agp vid cards. this sucks. any other suggestions.
 
Buy a cheap ATi AGP card like a Rage Pro for under $10, its worth having it to be able to test the system.(i recommend rage pro because its the cheapest AGP card with Win XP support.
 
i went out and got a diagnostic card to see if i can figure out whats the problem. the card is telling that there is a problem with the memory. As far as i know if its the memory, there would still be video that would show up. I dont know, am i wrong? I mean at least the monitor would turn on
 
i have 3 pieces of crucial ram, two of which is new. ive already tried reseating it. and tried individual ones in different slots. would it be the cmos, or the psu????
 
I tried a 400w psu. It didnt help. Im using the soyo diagnostic card so im wondering if anyone came across this code before and a similar problem with their comp. The code im getting is "C1" and the code message is "setting up the DRAM refresh rate, and inspecting the functionality of the DRAM controller" im soo stuck. any help would be appreciated
 
Did you try booting with just the one old stick of RAM?
And the new Crucial sticks one at a time as well?

Try them in different memory slots to see what happens.

If known good ram gets that C1 error on multiple memory slots, you may have a problem with the motherboard itself.
 
hey i finally figured it out. it was a dust bunny that was stuck on the memory. that i just couldnt see cause it was so small. but besides that. the c1 code was still coming up. So i had to try each hardware piece by piece. and it turns out that one of his dvd drives was broken. that seems weird to me because ive never seen a dvd drive go down and still come up with the c1 code. I guess its newbies luck that it took so long for me to get the solution. thanks for all that helped me out.
 
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