Questions regrding my build

[slayerized]

I am trying to build a C2D based system and I got all my parts together last week. I am having some trouble powering on the system. The PSU fans don't seem to go on and I dont think there is any power supply to the board. I tried the age old trick to see if the PSU may be functional; by shorting the green with the ground and then the fan does go on. I have a Gigabyte-965P-DS3 board with E6600 and Zalman cooling. The RAM i am using is G.Skill DDR2 800: F2-6400CL4D-2GBPK. I also have a Sapphire Radeon 1950 pro graphics card.

I have also tried the following:
- Checked the jumper connections from the case for power and reset
- Assembling the bare minimum components outside the box; no avail
- Placing one module of memory at a time

I really dont know whether the problem is with the PSU, memory or the board. Will the PSU turn on irrespective of whether the memory units are good/bad? Is there any other way to diagnose the part which is failing. Any help/inputs would be appreciated. This is my first build in a long time (the last being a Celeron system way back in 2000 i guess).

 

[caberguy]

The best way to do it is to isolate the components, but you'd have to have another system that you can swap them into. If you have a spare PSU you could try that. Also you can pick up a cheap PSU tester for around $10 online or at a local computer shop (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16899888901).

 

[Boyo]

might be a bad mobo. Look into that.

 

[slayerized]

A lot of boards I had at least had a small LED indicator on board suggesting some power is on board (not necessarily sufficient power). But I guess the boards these days do not come with that LED; or I am not sure if theres one in DS3 and I cant locate it. The whole RMA process is frustrating and I need to be sure which component is faulty before going ballistic and RMAing all the individual components!

It would be great if someone could answer the question I had asked previously --> Will the PSU turn on even if the RAM modules are faulty?

 

[Boyo]

yes, your psu will turn on automatically, even with two bad memeory modules. Run the program Memtest to see if you have faulty memory.

 

[slayerized]

To go to the Memtest stage of things I first need to atleast fire up my rig! I guess I will have to wait for a replacement board to arrive to do that.

 

[Boyo]

Even my mobo has a small LED light at the bottom to tell me when the rig is on. Have you double checked that there is no small led light on the mobo for power?

 

[slayerized]

OK! Finally I re-assembled the rig after jump starting the PSU and bam I see the start up screen! Thanks for your feedback