New Machine Not booting MSI Mobo/Athlon64

[Logolotta]

First time posting on this board, so hello everyone. Alright, so I'm helping my friend upgrade his machine. He had an older Athlon Thunderbird or whatever in it. He had a pretty strict budget of around 700 dollars, so we got him a new case, power supply, mobo, cpu, and video card. We're using his old hard drives, CD-ROMS, and memory (yeah i know...).

I just hooked everything up, put it all in the new case. Went to boot it up for the first time and somethings not right. First thing I noticed was the fan on the processor wasn't spinning and no video signal. All the drives are lighting up, but it appears the little fan connectors on the motherboard don't work. I by accident touched the thermal tape/compund the stock head sink came with for this CPU, and I know the PC 2100 memory in this thing can't be good, but I don't think they'd be causing this problem. Any help/suggestions welcome. I've posted the specs below:


MSI K8N Neo Motherboard (nForce 3 250Gb Chipset Based)
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 754)
Thermal Take 480watt PS
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB Video Card
768 of PC 2100 Memory



Chris-

 

[Mik3y]

touching the thermal compound wont cause this obviously, but perhaps you have a dead motherboard or dead psu. are you sure you connected the wires correctly also? the memory shouldnt cause this problem either, but you should get pc3200 for optimal performance.

 

[wfbberzerker]

do you have another motherboard you can try substituting to see if everything else works?

 

[EvanB]

Same thing happened to me. Try the RAM in different slots. Also consider getting faster RAM, that will limit your system ALOT. I dunno, pc2100 might not even work with that.

 

[wfbberzerker]

Originally posted by: EvanB
Same thing happened to me. Try the RAM in different slots. Also consider getting faster RAM, that will limit your system ALOT. I dunno, pc2100 might not even work with that.

pc2100 should work in that system, the k8n can run at 266mhz (im pretty sure, i have that mobo). but even then, i dont think it would cause the cpu and mobo to not work. hell, im pretty sure a computer will still POST with no ram.

 

[Viper96720]

got the 12v plugged in? It's a 4pin connector. I would test out of the case.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I'd breadboard the system, EG take out everything except the CPU, 1 stick of memory, and the video card and try and get it to post outside the case w/ the MB on an antistatic bag, also as suggested make sure the P4 12V power connector is pluged in and that the cpu fan is pluged into the CPU fan header on the motherboard and then take it from there, also as you have a 9800 you need to make sure it's aux power connector is connected as well or your system might not post. Hope this helps....

 

[Logolotta]

It was the 12v thing, I didnt realize I had to plug that sucker in on the 64 mobo's, but thanks everyone. Still not getting video though, tried 2 different video cards...I'm on that right now. I'm going to try moving the ram around...I dunno. Yeah I got nothing. I've hooked up 2 different video cards, and two different monitors. I'm not getting any beep errors or anything.

 

[Logolotta]

So apparently this mobo doesnt have beeping errors, it sends errors to the LED's on this USB thing that mounts into the PCI slot. It's got all four LEDs lighting up, indicating it's the processor. The CPU fan and everything is working now, but I've yet to actually get this machine to post.

I think maybe when mounting the heatsync to the processor I might have messed something up, or maybe things just came damaged. But there appears to be no physical damage to the processor, and when remounted I'm still getting nothing. My only idea now is to clean and reapply thermal compound and try over. Anyone have any ideas?

Also, when I took off the CPU heatsync the last time, the processor was stuck to it cause of the compound... Some how the processor like ripped out of the socket, but not pins were messed up. Like that little arm that closes the socket did nothing.

No emoticon can express my soul


Chris-