New system build woes. Built but not working.

[jader]

Purchased components from the monthly recommended system build earlier this month. Just wasn't able to get around to building the system, until yesterday. Just finished building a new PC last night, but having problems with getting it going now. System is ASUS PBZ77-V LK mobo, Intel i5 3570 processor, Gigabyte GTX670 video, 2x 8GB G.Skill memory, Samsung SSD, and other Samsung 1TB drive. The build went pretty well, but now, this...

I can't get any video/visual on the monitors. This is using either the Gigabyte video card, the integrated mobo video, including completely removing the video card from the mobo slot and trying. Using 2x Acer 23" screens, which were working fine with the system I'm replacing. They had been connected by VGA cable, but with the new video card, I can finally use the DVI cables instead. Connecting the cables, the floating screen message changes from "Cable Not Connected" to "No Signal", so it appears the system is at least seeing the connection. But nothing at startup, regardless of connection method.

I admit it's been a few years since my last system build. Do computers still provide a "beep" of some sort after completing the POST procedures? There is no beep at all. I ask because when I think of the new Dell PCs at work, there is no POST beep with them either, but there are working fine. So I wasn't sure if new PCs still did that or not.

So there is no audible beep of any code, no audible beep codes to follow indicating something wrong, and no video being provided to check any BIOS or other settings. I have went ahead and unplugged/replugged everything. The ASUS manual isn't very helpful with troubleshooting info. I remember a great website for nForce4 systems back in the days when I build a lot of computers, but can't seem to find anything related or similar for ASUS boards. It could possibly be something faulty, who knows, but I also can't seem to find out what it might be, as it seems I'm blind in my troubleshooting attempts?

Suggestions? Anything at all is appreciated! Thanks -

[chazus]

1) Did you install the brass risers between the case and motherboard?
2) Have you tried reseating the ram?
3) Is both the 24pin (On the right) AND the 8pin (top left) power plug for the motherboard plugged in?
4) Are the fans spinning? Does anything light up?

[jader]

Hi chazus, thanks for the reply.

1) Yeah, there are six brass risers under the motherboard for the six holes apparent, then screwed into the six riser posts to secure the mobo to the case.

2) Yes, reseated the RAM several times, as well as trying to start using each of the two sticks or RAM separately, and in different slots. Motherboard has 4 total slots, 2 blue, 2 black, and the manual says to populate the blue slots first. Which I have done.

3) Both the 24 pin and the 8 pin motherboard cables are connected to the motherboard securely.

4) Fars are spinning. When I press the power button, I see the fans spin up and continue spinning, smoothly. I hear the secondary hard drive spin up also. Nothing from the SSD, of course. From what I do hear audibly, the computer should be working. But there is not POST beep, no beep codes sounding, and absolutely nothing happens on the monitors, whether plugged into the video card, the mobo's onboard video DVI port, and also removing the video card completely and trying the onboard only.

[chazus]

Ah, here we go. Try this. I'm hopeful.

At the bottom of the board, below the last PCI-E slot, there are three buttons. A Power button, a Reset button, and red Clear CMOS button.

Try each of those one at a time, and see if one of them does the trick. I've seen a few posts in the very recent past with a situation identical to yours, where a new build needed one of those poked the first time.

[jader]

I did look for the three buttons/switches you mentioned, but only found a single switch that did not appear to be any of the three you mentioned.

I'm in the middle of taking things apart again. A couple things I've found interesting so far.

1) The back support bracket behind the motherboard provided by Noctua is certainly coming in contact with the case frame itself. Funny that one of the features of the case is that supposedly there is an area cut out allowing access to the back of the motherboard without having to remove mobo. Well, either the hole that is cut out is somehow in the wrong place, or the layout of the ASUS mobo puts the processor in an unusual place. Can't help but wonder if this is causing the problem. Will continue taking system down and putting it together as basic set up completely outside case.

2) When I removed one of each of the two RAM sticks, nothing happened. Same silence, no error codes, no video/visual anything. So I took both sticks out, and hit the power switch just to see. Finally there was an audible beep code of one long two short, which is No Memory Detected in the manual. Probably seems obvious, but I was just glad to finally have the system provide a hint of intelligence, even if only to produce a beep error code.

3) Removed the Noctua NH-D14 heatsink/fan and removed the Intel processor. Luckily everything appears fine, as there is no obvious damage, discoloration or anything similar.

4) One last thing I noticed is that the single fan on the top of the Corsaid TX650 PSU is not moving at all. I wondered if it could be a reactive fan only kicking on if temperature reached high enough, but I think that kind of seems unlikely.

Bout to call it a night. Plan to get the mobo completely out of case and might do a basic set up and power up before calling it a night. Will check back tomorrow. Thanks for help so far.

[chazus]

Okay, I was mistaken. I googled "ASUS P8Z77-V LK" to find some hi res images... and there are a TON of "Deluxe" board images but very few "LK".. I told you about the deluxe by accident. There IS a 'switch' at the bottom, but not what you're looking for. However there is ALSO a 'button' just above the 24 pin power. Try that one (it's one of the same buttons on the bottom of the Deluxe)

[jader]

That didn't take long to finish. I removed the motherboard, placed it on a clean piece of cardboard on the table, took the 24 and 8 pin motherboard power supply connectors and hooked up to mobo, put the stock heatsink on (one with no back side), connected the monitor to the mobo's DVI port and then using a screwdriver, carefully touched the 2 pins that would normally connect to the case's power switch wiring. The system did the exact same thing it's been doing. No POST beep, no beep code sequence, no video at all.

So at this point is it looking like PSU or motherboard are the culprit?

[chazus]

Did you try that button thingy just about the 24pin?

Also, do you have at least 1 ram stick in outside the case?

Everything else you described seems spot on for execution so far.

[ghrolt]

Might I just add that threads like these are really awesome to read. I'm planning on building a comp of my own some day - And this is just pure gold in case I screw up some how.

+1

[vesseblah]

So at this point is it looking like PSU or motherboard are the culprit?

You can do this to try out the PSU. If you don't have case fans to plug into it, DVD drive is also ok.

If the PSU passes this it's 90% sure the motherboard is dead, 9% for the CPU and 1% for the PSU. Would recommend RMAing both the motherboard and the CPU to be sure and let the store you bought those from sort it out.

[jader]

You can do this to try out the PSU. If you don't have case fans to plug into it, DVD drive is also ok.

If the PSU passes this it's 90% sure the motherboard is dead, 9% for the CPU and 1% for the PSU. Would recommend RMAing both the motherboard and the CPU to be sure and let the store you bought those from sort it out.

Have noted that fans do spin up and stay running when I attempt to start the system. Also, the DVD drive does seem to work also, as I was putting the OS CD in the drive the first time I attempted to start up. Just nothing happened past that point, lol. :P

At this point, I'm going to connect a different PSU and see what happens. I am also trying to find a friend or someone with similar RAM to see if results are different. Otherwise, I'm probably looking at a motherboard/CPU RMA.

[vesseblah]

Have noted that fans do spin up and stay running when I attempt to start the system. Also, the DVD drive does seem to work also, as I was putting the OS CD in the drive the first time I attempted to start up. Just nothing happened past that point, lol. :P

At this point, I'm going to connect a different PSU and see what happens. I am also trying to find a friend or someone with similar RAM to see if results are different. Otherwise, I'm probably looking at a motherboard/CPU RMA.

Crap, just noticed I forgot the link from my previous post... which is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4 for testing the PSU.

[jader]

Oh yeah, the ol' paper clip test for PSU. Actually tried that. Unless the PSU isn't putting out enough power consistently for some reason, it seems to be working. At least when looking at spinning fans and hearing a hard drive spin up.

[link4117]

Just to confirm. the fans on the video card were working, right?

This may or may not help, but I had a similar problem a year or so ago. Sometimes the psu fan would turn on, then suddenly it wasn't doing anything the next time I tried it after tweaking some some things. Sometimes it would give me post beeps and sometimes it wouldn't. I ended up taking all the components except the cpu out and installing them one by one, powering it on and off between each. So, heatsink plugged in, turn on and hopefully it works, turn off psu. Put in RAM, power everything on, make sure you're hearing noises, power everything off. So on and so forth. It worked for me, for whatever reason. It's like it wasn't recognizing new components if I put more than one in at a time.

[chazus]

Did you try the clear cmos button above the 24pin? Just verifying so we can rule that out.

[Tahapenes]

Just on a weird off chance, did you plug the monitor to the onboard video connectors? I have seen times where the onboard will override a video card in the first PCI-E slot.

[jader]

Yeah, I reset the CMOS by removing the battery, pressing power button allowing reset/clear, the replacing battery. I don't see a CMOS switch, and the switch above the 24 pin power connector is labeled "GPU Boost".

I had connected video to both the separate video card and the mobo's integrated video connectors. No visual result either way.

[Lemmiwink]

Do you have a MemOK button on that MB? That problem sounds like a typical RAM/VRAM issue. Tried removing the videocard and powering it up?