PC Build – Help needed

digitalscream

Danny1969 said:

Have you got a caps lock light when you press caps lock .. if you have then the machine has at least partly posted but there's no video
If you haven't got a caps lock light then pull all the ram out and see if you get beep code or light code for no ram

Has the PSU got enough juice on the 12V rail for the video card. You can have a 1000W power supply but that's no good if that's 800W of 5V and only 200 of 12V

Are the standoffs under the board in the right place or are some fouling the underside of the board and shorting it  ? There should only be a metal standoff where there is a hole in the motherboard.

The motherboard is literally yelling at us that the problem is the CPU. Possibilities are that it's seated poorly, the socket's knackered, the CPU's knackered, or the motherboard isn't able to power it (before it gets to initialise the GPU, which won't be drawing more than a few watts at that stage anyway).

swiller

beed84 said:

Bidley said:

My money's on dead CPU or RAM. The only thing I would try now is a single stick of RAM in each slot, i.e remove them, put one in slot 1, let it post (or attempt to), then remove it, put it in slot 2 and so forth. Do this with both sticks.

An alternative would be to buy some RAM from Amazon and try them. If they don't work then you're boned, and you can at least return the RAM for your money back.

Just tried both sticks of RAM individually in each slot and still no joy.

Before taking it to the shop on Monday, I could try some new RAM from Amazon. There's a Crucial DDR4 2666 MHz 4GB for £10.97. Would that be sufficient to test?

take it to the shop. My money is on motherboard shot. They should have tools, experience and config of systems to diagnose what the issue is pretty quickly. Rather than you spending way more in experiments.  Whatever is wrong, you should be able to get your money back on whatever part it is. They should be able to put your CPU/Graphics and ram into another motherboard quite easily.

digitalscream

For what it's worth, I'll post the same advice here that I gave @beed84 by PM - if you're buying second hand, always buy the motherboard and CPU together, and insist that they're tested prior to shipping, and that the CPU is left in the motherboard (ie just remove the cooler). That removes any chance that the CPU pins (if AMD prior to 7x00) or motherboard pins (if Intel or Ryzen 7x00) can be damaged in the packing/shipping process.

Emp_Fab

digitalscream said:

Danny1969 said:

Have you got a caps lock light when you press caps lock .. if you have then the machine has at least partly posted but there's no video
If you haven't got a caps lock light then pull all the ram out and see if you get beep code or light code for no ram

Has the PSU got enough juice on the 12V rail for the video card. You can have a 1000W power supply but that's no good if that's 800W of 5V and only 200 of 12V

Are the standoffs under the board in the right place or are some fouling the underside of the board and shorting it  ? There should only be a metal standoff where there is a hole in the motherboard.

The motherboard is literally yelling at us that the problem is the CPU. Possibilities are that it's seated poorly, the socket's knackered, the CPU's knackered, or the motherboard isn't able to power it (before it gets to initialise the GPU, which won't be drawing more than a few watts at that stage anyway).

Do not question the wisdom of the Danny.

Only the foolish attempt such folly.

beed84

swiller said:

beed84 said:

Bidley said:

My money's on dead CPU or RAM. The only thing I would try now is a single stick of RAM in each slot, i.e remove them, put one in slot 1, let it post (or attempt to), then remove it, put it in slot 2 and so forth. Do this with both sticks.

An alternative would be to buy some RAM from Amazon and try them. If they don't work then you're boned, and you can at least return the RAM for your money back.

Just tried both sticks of RAM individually in each slot and still no joy.

Before taking it to the shop on Monday, I could try some new RAM from Amazon. There's a Crucial DDR4 2666 MHz 4GB for £10.97. Would that be sufficient to test?

take it to the shop. My money is on motherboard shot. They should have tools, experience and config of systems to diagnose what the issue is pretty quickly. Rather than you spending way more in experiments.  Whatever is wrong, you should be able to get your money back on whatever part it is. They should be able to put your CPU/Graphics and ram into another motherboard quite easily.

Thanks all. I'm flogging a dead horse as it stands, so I'm just going to take it to the shop like @swiller suggests – anything I do now will either make it worse or cost me more money. 

Also, I didn't attach any motherboard standoffs. So yeah, after discovering what they are and what they do, it's possible that I've shorted the motherboard. I seriously hope not.

Many lessons learn here. Like @digitalscream said, I'll be taking more precautions buying used in the future, along with being more careful in overall assembly and doing stuff I don't fully understand.

Will update the fault / diagnosis in the coming days.

digitalscream

Also, I didn't attach any motherboard standoffs. So yeah, after discovering what they are and what they do, it's possible that I've shorted the motherboard. I seriously hope not.

Oooohhhhh boy...yeah, that would almost certainly cause problems. Not necessarily permanently fatal ones, but in most cases it would definitely prevent proper operation.

beed84

digitalscream said:

Also, I didn't attach any motherboard standoffs. So yeah, after discovering what they are and what they do, it's possible that I've shorted the motherboard. I seriously hope not.

Oooohhhhh boy...yeah, that would almost certainly cause problems. Not necessarily permanently fatal ones, but in most cases it would definitely prevent proper operation.

[Insert facepalm] The joys of being a noob. Kinda wish I bought an Xbox and a Mac mini now.

digitalscream

beed84 said:

digitalscream said:

Also, I didn't attach any motherboard standoffs. So yeah, after discovering what they are and what they do, it's possible that I've shorted the motherboard. I seriously hope not.

Oooohhhhh boy...yeah, that would almost certainly cause problems. Not necessarily permanently fatal ones, but in most cases it would definitely prevent proper operation.

[Insert facepalm] The joys of being a noob. Kinda wish I bought an Xbox and a Mac mini now.

OK - this is probably a bit late, but these videos pretty much sum everything up:





They're quite long, but very comprehensive.

beed84

Since everyone is privy to the problem, it seems embarrassing to ask. But would anyone be interested in buying this as spares and repairs? I’m in a position to cut my losses and move on.

Moloch

Well before giving up, I'd say at least try putting the board on something non-conductive and try to start it up then. Might be that the stand-off issue was the whole problem.

And honestly, if you get it working, you'll never look back. I remember building my first one back in 2001, when my uncle couldn't afford a pre-built. The thing that held us up was that you needed to format the HDD with a floppy disk back then and it was the one thing that didn't get a mention in the 'How to Build a PC' article that I read in Micro Mart. Someone on the customer care lines for one of the retailers from whom we'd bought parts talked us through it and 'hey presto'! Since then I've built tons of the things. You'll get there. Even if this winds up being a repair shop job, you'll know for the future.

nero1701

beed84 said:

Since everyone is privy to the problem, it seems embarrassing to ask. But would anyone be interested in buying this as spares and repairs? I’m in a position to cut my losses and move on.

stick a sheet of cardboard under

beed84

Okay, I’ll watch the videos above to see if there’s anything I’ve missed and will give the stand-off thing a try over the weekend. I suppose it won’t cost me anything other than my time.

digitalscream

beed84 said:

Okay, I’ll watch the videos above to see if there’s anything I’ve missed and will give the stand-off thing a try over the weekend. I suppose it won’t cost me anything other than my time.

Skip to 32:59 in the first video, it shows you what to do. Get everything out of the case, and try it with the motherboard resting on the motherboard box. Don't skip any of the steps.

Danny1969

Also before you try anything remove the cmos battery, then with the pwr switch connected to the board press and hold it for about 20 seconds. 
Some parts of the board like the serial bus are protected by soft fuses ... if a shorts detected like a bad USB device has shorted the 5V rail to ground then it will turn off the power until the system has been reset in the manner above. Other parts of the board like the card slots also have protection. 

You might be lucky, there's been many a machine come into the shop I do the repairs for where the customer has shorted the board out on the build, it's very common so the first thing I always do is take the board out first. There's only been a few fatal ones I can remember, most of the time I rebuild it, reset the board and it's running again. 

Emp_Fab

So....  how did you fix the motherboard into the case?  Did you screw it in - directly into the base (side) ?

You might be lucky if you put the standoffs in.

Fingers crossed for you mate.

Sporky

I once knocked a component (I think it was an inductor) off an expensive new graphics card putting it in. It still worked.

Danny1969

Sporky said:

I once knocked a component (I think it was an inductor) off an expensive new graphics card putting it in. It still worked.

A cap more likely but could have an inductor used in a low pass filter in parallel, most are used in buck convertors on video cards and as the inductor is in series the output would have stopped. 

On a lot of devices, like a harddrive or laptop or PC board one of the first things that tends to fail short circuit is the cap they install as general house keeping, to take off any ripple that might be picked up or caused by the power cable. Nine times out of ten just removing that cap and not replacing it works out fine. 

beed84

Well, I did everything suggested above and unfortunately the CPU light persists. To the shop it goes. 

Thanks again for the encouragement and advice. Hopefully it’ll all be resolved in the coming days.

snowblind

Seconding the comment above relating to the power supply rating. 650W sounds a little under spec for the components listed.
I've seen similar symptoms to those described in HP Z-series workstations when the PSU goes out to lunch.

digitalscream

snowblind said:

Seconding the comment above relating to the power supply rating. 650W sounds a little under spec for the components listed.
I've seen similar symptoms to those described in HP Z-series workstations when the PSU goes out to lunch.

Nah. I've got a 500W Corsair running an i5-12400F with 64GB RAM and a 6600XT. That's roughly the same power levels as the components he's got, and it's so far from breaking a sweat that the PSU fan doesn't even come on under gaming load; he's not even getting to the point of initialisation, before any of the components are even at idle.