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HELP NEEDED ON FIRST BUILD!!!

J

JBird7986

Senior member
If anyone can help me with this, I'd be greatly obliged! I set out to build my first rig this morning to replace Aquarius (see sig), and unfortunately, my attempts thus far have ended in minor failure. All of the solid components (CPU, RAM, HDD, etc.) have made it into my rig thus far OK, but I cant seem to get the power button to turn on the power supply. I don't think that that the power supply or the motherboard is DOA, as the power supply, when connected to the wall and turned on is illuminating the green LED on the motherboard. I'm pretty sure I've plugged all of the headers to the case in correctly (having done it four times, and triple checking the direction of the headers), but the power still won't come on when I press the button. Any thoughts, and/or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Specs:

Cooler Master Centurion 534+ case
Antec NeoHE 550W SLI-certified power supply
ASUS A2N-E nForce 570 Ultra motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (65W) Windsor Processor
2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 PC6400 RAM (dual channel kit)
640MB eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS video card
250GB WD Caviar HDD (16MB Cache, SATA 3.0Gbps)
Lite-On 18X DVD+/-RW -RAM Drive (IDE)
 
Are all of the necessary PSU connections plugged in? Heatsink fan, PCIe, and CPU power, specifically. The PCIe one is somewhat easy to forget, in particular.
 
I've plugged in the heatsink fan to the connector on the motherboard, got the 24-pin ATX connector and the 4-pin CPU connector, however, the only PCIe power connector seems to be on the card itself, and I've gotten that one too. My problem is that I can't get the system to even turn on (i.e. no fans spinning (even in the PSU)) when I press the power button.
 
This is going to sound really silly, but sometimes you overlook obvious stuff.
Do you have switch on the power supply itself switched to the on position?
 
I completely agree, and that's what I'm hoping for here, but yes...that's why the LED on the motherboard is green and lit.
 
To check for a faulty switch, physically short out the on/off pins on the mobo w/ a screwdriver or something. If this doesnt do it, keep posting!
 
By that, do you mean plug in the power, take a screwdriver and hold it against the power and ground pins on the motherboard power area?
 
Originally posted by: JBird7986
By that, do you mean plug in the power, take a screwdriver and hold it against the power and ground pins on the motherboard power area?
Click to expand...

Yes. You might also want to try your motherboard with just the Video Card, RAM and CPU outside the case, on top of the anti static bag it came in, to make sure one of the standoffs on the case isn't shorting it out.
 
I must admit that I'm curious about what the results from that would be, but I'm afraid to try it with my computer-building skills. I'm afraid I might wreck something and that this is just a touch beyond my skills. Additional suggestions are, of course, appreciated.
 
Noema mentions a good thing to check, have done that myself....should at least remove board and make sure you don't have any extra standoffs touching motherboard.
Doing that you redo it again putting it back together, kinda like retracing your steps.
You may find something that was backwards or what have ya.
 
Well, I followed your guys advice, but now the LED on the motherboard comes on for a moment and then blinks on and off randomly. Any thoughts? Is it the motherboard, PSU or something else?
 
I've had the 'LED on but nothing works' thing in the past and it turned out to be a bad PSU.

I'd definitely try a different PSU next, just to see if that gets it to POST.
 
Before you go out and try a new PSU (which I have mistakenly done in the past), you might just try to start with

1. Nothing plugged in - just CPU and Motherboard - remove RAM, GPU, anything else.
2. Start up your computer - Make sure you get a Double-Beep it indicate you have a RAM problem.
3. If you get that, add in the RAM.
4. Start again. Now you want 3 beeps (videocard-less post).
5. Add in the video card.
6. If it posts, start adding other things (SATA, Floppy, Soundcard, etc)

If you don't get the double beep with nothing in, pull out your CPU and try and re-set it in the socket. At that point you should consider things like shorts, motherboard/cpu/psu problems.

Motherboards can be very temperamental. You may just have to reseat your components a couple of times.
 
I did. I've been attempting everything I can think of over the last couple days, but still nothing works. I'm wondering if anyone else is thinking bad PSU, b/c when I press the button one fan starts to spin, but just barely before it cuts out (like a 16th of a rotation).
 
If you had a PSU tester it'd be easier to eliminate your PSU as the source of the problem. Usually to narrow it down to the motherboard I unplug everything including the memory. If the motherboard is functioning correctly there should be a bunch of long beeps to indicate there is no memory onboard. If it doesn't do that the board is probably faulty.
 
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