Dead Motherboard - or other problem?

[Guest]

Bought brand new abit kt7a motherboard, atrhlon 1.2ghz 266fsb processor, 256mb of pc133 sdram, and a 300 watt atx power supply. Put my system together with parts from my old system, turned power on. Problem:

No display. The motherboard IS powered - the fans on the athlon is going, no beep code. The speaker is making a clicking noise. So I tinkered, disconnected all non essential parts, so its just powersupply connected to the motherboard with a vid card and same problem. And the power button doesn't work, have to turn off the power supply on the back.

The interesting thing, when the power supply is replaced with a 250w atx power supply, instead of the clicking noise, the speaker just beeps continously for about 5-6 seconds untill the power cuts out and the fans stop spinning. Still no display on my monitor.

I've been told the motherboard is the problem? Could it be anything else? I'm at a loss.

The vid card is a tnt2 - Elsa Erazor, it works fine in other systems. As do all the other parts that I didn't mention.

 

[tartarhus]

I would suspect your power supply before anything else. Check www.amd.com for approved power supplies. If it isn't your power supply it might be your processor setup. Make sure its fan is closely fitted and that the processing chip isn't already damaged. Make sure the processor is clamped down properly to the mobo. Also make sure the cpu fan is plugged into the right fan slot. Abit boards are kinda of picky about cpu fans, and some will automatically shut down if they sense a cpu fan has failed or is not available (all good things can sometimes be a pain in the rear).

 

[Guest]

alright, but i did try another power supply

it was a 250watt power supply (the chip recommends 300, but 250 is listed as a minimum). Nothing was hooked up except power supply, vid card, ram and chip on the motherboard - 5 or 6 seconds of continous beep followed by complete shutdown as the power cuts out and the fans stop spinning, no video output during that time.

DOes that give anyone any clue?

 

[Guest]

actually that does remind me of some posts from a few weeks ago. What kind of heatsink/fan do you have on the CPU? Some of the new ones (Silverado comes to mind) run at very low RPM and abit mobos see this as fan failure and shut themselves down. The solution is to flash in a new BIOS that lets you disable the low RPM alarm. Of course, to do that you need it to work first so you have to install a heatsink/fan which runs at a high RPM, flash the BIOS, disable the alarm, and then reinstall you new good heatsink/fan. Pretty much a pain but what can you do. Other thing to watch for is that the power supplies are set to ~120V if you're in the US and ~240V in Europe/elsewhere. There's a switch on the back of the power supply for this.