I'm at a loss, tried everything

[Ranger Hank]

my motherboard is a TA790GX with 2x2GB sticks of ram, a 3.2 ghz quad core AMD2 chip, GeForce 9800 GTX black edition card. I've got two 10000 rpm SATA hard drives, a 500 watt PSU designed specifically to work with the Geforce 9800GTX.


The motherboard powers up, no post. The GTX card gets power, gets a light on. All the fans spin, the hard drives spin at first when it starts up, then nothing. The monitor gets no signal at all from either port on the GTX or from the onboard video. I've tried moving the ram around, every combination of one or both chips in all the slots. I've tried booting with just the MB, CPU all the way up to the full load and everything in between. I've quadruple checked the jumpers. My instinct tells me that the MB is fried but then why do the hard drives spin and why does the GTX load up. Also, the LEDS flash when I turn it on and then they turn back off. Both LEDs off on this board says "CPU/chipset error" in the manual but the CPU worked in another system.

I am seriously about to just hit it with a hammer.

[aaron.martinas]

i honestly dont know what the MINIMUM requirements are to boot a system. id assume it was the motherboard, cpu, and some amount of ram. if that doesnt boot, and if the CPU works on another system, that obviously leaves only the MB and RAM. if you can eliminate the ram as the culprit (if you have another system with that ram type), then it'd be clear what the problem is.

i had a 500 or so watt psu and it couldnt handle my two 9800GTX+s. it could handle one, but only poorly as i remember it. but youre not even getting that far, so i wouldnt yet blame it on insufficient power.

[bathurst_guy]

I'd say motherboard is gone too.

[JunkMale]

POST (Power On Self Test) is a sequence of signals that the PSU recieves from the motherboard is recieving a power supply, when the PSU is outputting a steady supply and the mobo accepts the supply by signalling the PSU and then the board powers up. This happens is a matter of milliseconds, so its something you do not notice until the machine fails to power up or boot properly.

If anything in the conversation between your PSU and Mobo goes sideways, the mobo drops the supply and will not power up. You may still hear hard drives spinning and fans blowing, but that is no indication that all is OK or that theirs an issue with the mobo, it could very well be the PSU itself!.

I have had PSU's flake out because the shop put in a PSU that was at its limits of supply and was a constant annoyance of rebooting and whatnot until I put a beefier supply in. I have had PSU's blow up on me and anyone who has had it happen to them can say that they not only gow with a bang but a fizzel and lotta flames flying out the back! I have had PSU's that fail and only work on one power rail! Nothing to do with the actual PSU but a break in the wire between the connector and PSU.

You have to remember that the more you plug things in and pull them out, these have tolls on the components, the cables and connectors. These are more suited to touch only when you have to. So if you have had your fatties in the case more often than your girlfriend knickers, thats where your problem could be...

If you happen to have a spare PSU laying around, this will be the quickest option to you and quickest test to see if the mobo has died. It is far more cheaper than taking the machine to a shop for repair!

[CoryLuLu]

People have to remember to reflash there BIOS if you are having boot problems.

If this is your first boot (which I am not sure if it is or not) then you should start with as little hardware as possible

Unplug the power and take out the battery in the motherboard for about 15 minutes....

Put the battery back in and turn on the power (with as little hardware as possible for boot; CPU, MoBo, Video Card, Ram)

Typically if your MoBo is gone, you will get beeps, if you don't get beeps, its typically a BIOS issue.