Comp trouble, looking for suggestions

[liqudplummer]

I could really use some help guys.

I've built a few comps and I built this one for a friend. About 3 months in, she left it on one day while out and came home to find it was off and would not turn back on.

I was pretty cavalier in my trouble shooting of this so reserve judgment . The comp basically had no signs of life on hitting the power button. No spin up no noise. The Biostar mobo I had in it did not have a power light to signify the mobo was getting power. I assumed (incorrectly I now believe) the psu was shot so I RMA'd the Rosewill 500 watt to newegg and without much delay they sent back what appears to be a brand new one.

Hooked it up, same problem, no life.

So I came to my senses and tested the PSU with a test I found a while back where u use wire or a paperclip to trick the mobo power connector into thinking the comp is on. The PSU fired up with all the drives and fans attached like a champ. It just won't fire up while connected to the mobo. So I figure the mobo is broke

Again in haste I get a new Asus mobo in and reconnect it all, this time with a power light on he mobo which does come on. Same 2 sticks of ram, amd x2 and cooler and an optical and hard drive attached. The comp will not show life when u hit the power switch.

So maybe the power switch in this Antec 300 case? Well I played mad scientist and actually connected the power switch connector from another case to the Asus board, powered everything up and tried to get it to turn over with the other cases (known to work) power switch. Still nothing, tho I'm not sure if that would work anyway...

I've tried removing the Sapphire 3850, removing each stick of ram, the drives, and most combinations of those. Nothing will get it to boot up.

Before another 5 day wait for UPS to bring another part, I figured I'd beg for a fresh outlook. ANY suggestions would be great.

 

[wanderer27]

Have you tried different RAM?

It does sound like the first MB may have had a problem since you now have a light.

I suspect there was a surge and possibly some other components are toast as well - happened to me early this year

I'd try with just one stick of RAM (known good), and the Video Card (known good if possible).
You should get some errors/beeps (no Keyboard, Mouse, HD, etc.), but right now you just want to see what works.
Add one component at a time until something kills it.

Oh, and welcome to the Forums

 

[mpilchfamily]

Well you now have 2 strikes against you. First one was to use a cheap Rosewill PSU and the second was to replace it with the same brand and model PSU. Rosewill PSUs are marginal at best. At there worste they die and tend to kill other system components when they do. So you could have a dead CPU, RAM , Motherboard, video card or all the above.

Unfortunatly you may have to continue replacing thigs till you find the problem. But the first thing i would do is get a good quality PSU for the system.