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Newly built PC will not start

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DalamarD

Junior Member
My friend recently put together his first PC, only to have it not start up. I went over to check it out and offer what help I could, but it seems he did everything right. All the hook-ups seem correct, and everything seems to work fine. There is power to the motherboard as all the fans run just fine. The LEDs on the MB indicate that it detects RAM, a CPU, and the graphics card. I checked everything out I could, the CPU is seated properly, heatsink seems fine, thermal paste is good, etc.
When we start it up, there's just absolutely no signal to the monitor. No POST, BIOS, etc. I unfortunately don't have a spare vid card to swap in to test, but he's working on finding one. Any other help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. In my limited experience, I'm leaning towards a faulty vid card or MB. But I'm sure I could be overlooking something. Thanks in advance. The specs are as follows:

MB: DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR NF4 939
Processor: AMD 64 4000+ 2.4g 939 San Diego core
PSU: Antec TPII 550ATX RTL
Memory: 2x 1G OCZ sticks
Vid Card: Radeon Sapphire A X850 XT
 
I would pull one of the sticks of RAM out - try it with just one installed at a time to see if that makes a difference.
 
My friend had the same MOBO and he had the same problem too, he thought it was the video card at first too.
The cause of his problem was pretty dumb...I went to check out what's wrong and realized he screwed his MOBO directly to the case (no spacers) and was shorting out the MOBO making it fail POST.
This is most likely not your issue, but my opinion is that it's not a faulty vid card or MOBO, so before you RMA it or something check the small things.
Small things like case jumpers (pwr switch, pwr LED, etc). They might be put in the wrong way or in the wrong place. I do not think MA/SL etc settings would cause what you described, but check small things like those.
Oh and a question, when you try to turn it on, does it just not respond at all? Or does it actually power on, but just not get anywhere?
 
Thanks for the responses so far guys. To answer your question LTOwnalot, it powers on just fine. All the fans/LEDs and whatnot work. The disk drive works, so power is getting to the system. It's just not sending any discernable output to the monitor. I'll check on some of the stuff you've suggested tomorrow, but keep the ideas coming. Thanks again.
 
Pardon me for mentioning this. I'd put this in the category of over-sight, but its worth the second it takes to verify. Is the 12v p4 lead plugged into the the board? You would have all the symptoms you're mentioning and you would fail to get video.

Since I assume he didn't over-look it, there is a very real possibility that the board is grounding against the case. Pull the board and place it on a peice of cardboard or back in the box it came in. We want to start with only the mobo, cpu, the vid card, and one stick of ram. Now use a screw driver or something similar to short the pins where the power on switch would connect to your mobo. If you get video, there's a good chance the board is grounding out against the case. Spacers would be your fix.

If I'm wrong, keep throwing out the details of what you've done and we'll keep giving you more suggestions. Eventually one of us will direct you to the source of your troubles.

In other words, we'll find it ... but not necessarily on the first try.
 
Did it work on the bench with just the mb, cpu, hsf, ram, and vid card? This should always be the first step in building. I also adjust all of my bios settings while doing this.
 
The DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR NF4 939 is a MOBO that if you don't use spacers, you'll probably notice something is wrong. Like I said, my friend (first-timer in building pc) screwed it directly to the case, and that dented the back panel of the soft aluminum case (this mobo has HUGE screws that screws the processor heatsink base / processor tray to the MOBO). I doubt your mobo is shorting itself on the back panel like my friend did, but like DetroitSportsFan said, you should check that too since it's only your friend's first time building a pc.

If the fans and such turn on like you said, I don't think it would be a jumper / power connection to the MOBO problem. Afterall, if you could turn on the computer that means the pwr switch can signal the MOBO and turn on the peripherals. It does sound like it could be shorting itself, but not many people make this mistake.

Does the video card power up when the computer turns on? In fact, is the power cable plugged into the video card? That could be something that's overlooked. I'm assuming the Radeon Sapphire A X850 XT needs a power cable to be plugged into it eventhough it's PCI-E.

Most new PSUs has a PCI-E video card power connector. It looks similar to the +12V power connector to the MOBO, but with 6 pins instead of 4.
 
Thank you all very much for the input so far. He's actually on vacation this week, so I can't really do much until he's back. I'm gonna be runnig MemTest on both RAM sticks while he's gone to make sure they're not the problem just in case. Soon as he gets back I'll take the MB out and check for shortages. Didn't really think of that one, hopefully it's something relatively simple like that.
 
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