How to tell if a motherboard is working or not?

[sanna]

I got a brand new motherboard from ebay (GAINWARD 6IWC Socket 370 Intel 810 Chipset Motherboard) and my brother gave me his old Celeron 300 CPU and heatsink which he told me was working fine. But when I put these two together, there is just blank on my monitor when I boot up the machine. The built-in speaker to the case doesn't even make that little "beep" sound as other computers would. Yes I did plug the speaker cable into the motherboard in the right direction. Since it doesn't have that beep sound, I am guessing it's not even the video at fault. Either the motherboard is bad, or the CPU has decide to die on me. How do I tell which component is responsible? Thanks a lot.

 

[fergiboy]

Dont rule out the power supply. If you can find another celeron, p3, or motherboard you can test. But other than that it is a guessing game.

 

[sanna]

Wow, the power supply actually matters? I know AMD has recommended power supplies for its processors, but I couldn't find the same info on Intel's website. The power supply I have comes within a Genica case I bought from Computergeeks. I also have an AMD machine running with Antec SX840 power supply. Would it be OK if I use this power supply to test on the Celeron machine?

 

[DaiShan]

it depends on if your motherboard is at or atx, I believe that it is atx though, so it would be ok to test it out with that, but check to make sure, also if you aren't getting any beep codes at all, and nothing happens, it is a pretty good sign it is the motherboard that is fried. do any of the drives/fans power up?
/edit: your motherboard is microatx and will accept an atx power supply so it is fine to test out that psu from your sx840