Power problem

[Dreadnok]

Hello all,

Have had great help here in the past and am hoping you can help again. Normally I leave my machine running, but when I woke up yesterday and came in the room it was off. I tried powering it on and got nothing. I checked the OCZ power stream in my sig with a power supply tester that I borrowed from a friend and it said it was good.

 

Basically you unplug all the devices on the power supply and just plug in the 24pin connecter to the tester and it gives you an led reading of good or fault. When I did this and powered on the psu the fans on the board powered up fine and ran until i unplugged power. I plugged everything back up and tried to power it on with the case power switch and also the switch on the mobo and got some brief fan motion and a flicker of diagnostic lights before everything went dark.

 

When everything is plugged in and the psu switch on the back of it is turned on the dram power led and the standby power led on the board are lit making me think it is getting good power. I just don't get anything when I try to power the system on.

 

When I first built this thing about 2 years ago I made sure I had an approved psu and ram and everything has run pretty smooth since. I did have one problem before when I couldn't get past the post screen and clearing CMOS fixed that.

 

Any thoughts? I read that I should try to clear CMOS for this problem as well? Maybe unplug all hardware except the cpu, one stick of ram in farthest orange slot from cpu, and vid card and see what happens?

 

Thanks for any advice guys.

[tasr]

Any thoughts? I read that I should try to clear CMOS for this problem as well? Maybe unplug all hardware except the cpu, one stick of ram in farthest orange slot from cpu, and vid card and see what happens?

 

Thanks for any advice guys.

Sound like you know what to try. I would do a CMOS clear first. When was the last time the CMOS battery was replaced?

[Dreadnok]

Tasr,

I have never replaced the battery. Might be a dumb question but how long are they good for? I have had the system a little over 2 years.

[Dreadnok]

Okay I think I have narrowed it down to two things. I tried the CMOS clear that didn't work. When I finally unplugged the pci express power cable to my vid card but left the card in the board the system booted. I got all the diagnostic lights to start normal then the closest one to the rear of the case stays on which the manual says is VGA detected. I tried the other pci express power cable to the card and tried to boot again and got nothing.

 

So either both pci express connectors on the psu are bad or the card is bad? If the card was bad would the board even detect it and give me that light? I don't have another pci vid card I can try so not sure what to do now. Any suggestions? If I had to buy another vid card at this point, what would be my best bet at around $300?

[tasr]

You have a total of 4 power connectors plugged into the motherboard right?

 

Plug in all four (4) power connectors. These are;

24-pin main power connector

4-pin 12v secondary connector or EPS

4-pin 5v/12v molex connection or HDD-type

4-pin 5v/12v floppy connection or FDD-type

 

Move the card to the lower PCI-e Slot. Check the manual to move the PCI-e jumpers if this work. You may want to try another PCI-e card in the upper slot before thinking about RMA.

[Coors]

For a card under $300 that would be an eVGA 8800GTS 320mg. It went for $279 the last I checked.

[Dreadnok]

Tasr,

Thanks for the continued feedback. Yup I have all four power connections plugged in. You mentioned plugging the vid card into a lower pci-e slot. I am not sure what good this would do. The board recognizes the card in the slot it is in, it is just that the system will not boot when the pci express connector from the power supply is hooked up to it. That is why I was thinking it was maybe a power supply issue. I will try your suggestion though. It can't hurt.

 

Thanks again.