Problem with my first build

[MightyMidget]

Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 2000MHz HT Socket 939
Ram: Patriot Signature Series 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered
Video Card: XFX Geforce 6800 XTreme 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16

The problem I've run into is when powering up and attempting to create a Bios I get a message on the monitor saying no signal. The video card is getting power, but only supports DVI but I don't think that is a problem as the monitor supports DVI. I've a hunch that it doesn't like the fact that the video card needs to be in a blue PCIexpress slot instead of the white PCI slots but seeing as I know little of nothing...

Any hints, help, yells, whatever would be appreciated

 

[waylander]

Do you get any beeps? Retry it with only one stick of ram in slot 1, if it doesn't work try the other stick.

Did you plug in any extra power connectors into the video card? Read the video card manual to see if it's required.

 

[MightyMidget]

No beeps. No cables required to the video card. Not even any connecters to hook a cable into

On side note there are actually two 512 sticks of ram

 

[waylander]

I understand that there are two sticks of ram... my point was that one of them may be bad so try using one at a time just in case.

The little card between the 2 slot is in the normal setting not the SLi right?

If you are talking about the pci slot between the two pci-e then it has nothing to do with SLI, SLI needs a bridge between the two cards and is bios controlled.

 

[Mondoman]

First, what brand/model equipment do you have? Case, PS, etc.
The suggestion above about leaving in only 1 memory module, and trying it in different slots, is a good one. Another idea is to get a different brand of memory, like Corsair, and see if that makes the difference.
Obviously, making sure the BIOS is up-to-date is important, but it sounds like you can't even boot into the BIOS (although you were not quite clear on that).

Some notes on the earlier, non-Premium version of the board indicate that it is very picky on power supplies, requiring at least 18A per +12V rail on a dual-rail PS.

It's often useful (but a pain!) in these situations to take the MB, PS etc out of the case and bench-test w/o any drives, just to make sure it's not an installation issue.


mp - it looks like his "Premium" version board does the SLI mode switching in software, not by using a physical card.

 

[Mondoman]

Well if you read the post he has an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium socket 939 board.

Yes. That MB switches SLI vs normal mode in software, not by using a jumper card.

And i thought this was a video problem not a memory problem.

Lack of video output can be caused by many different things. For example, in my recent NI8 SLI build, it was caused by incompatibility of the MB with the SPD on my Ballistix RAM.

 

[Mondoman]

Another suggestion I forgot to mention before is to use an old PCI (not PCIEx) video board instead of your new one to see if it's specifically a video issue rather than a system-not-booting issue.

 

[badge]

Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 2000MHz HT Socket 939
Ram: Patriot Signature Series 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered
Video Card: XFX Geforce 6800 XTreme 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16

The problem I've run into is when powering up and attempting to create a Bios I get a message on the monitor saying no signal. The video card is getting power, but only supports DVI but I don't think that is a problem as the monitor supports DVI. I've a hunch that it doesn't like the fact that the video card needs to be in a blue PCIexpress slot instead of the white PCI slots but seeing as I know little of nothing...

Any hints, help, yells, whatever would be appreciated

You should try your monitor with an entirely different computer/video card and rule out the possibility it is your monitor on the blink, not your videocard/new build.

 

[MightyMidget]

Trying the monitor on a different sytem was my first step. Works beautifully.[/quote]

 

[badge]

]

Trying the monitor on a different sytem was my first step. Works beautifully

The BIOS has a setting for SLI. Try turning that ON. I believe the defult is OFF. Worked for my SLI setup on that board. I know, you don't have SLI, but it couldn't hurt to try. The setting is under ADVANCED under PCI option I believe. Save and exit BIOS after enabling SLI. I built that board yesterday.