New System Not Powering on - Advice Needed

I'm going to assume you've already got the stand-offs b/t the case and board since you've built 3 systems so far. Lets try these things: I seriously doubt it's a CPU issue since your fans and other items will still power up as long as there is a CPU in the socket

1. Make sure the Power SW is connect to the mother board.

2. Reset the CMOS on the board to make sure something wasn't messed up, it's a longshot, but if it works you don't have to take all the parts out of your board  

3. Try running w/ one stick of RAM, the board, and CPU.

4. Test the PSU - Jump the black and green wires w/ a paperclip and power it up. The fans inside the PSU should spin. **!Be careful here, I take no responsibility if you shock your self!**

**Jumping Diagram**
[][][][][][][][][] you want to jump the green wire with the black
[][][][][][][][][] wire on the opposite side.
||||||| <---- Clip facing down.

If none of this works, I'm willing to bet it's a bad board or PSU.

Can you explain in more detail exactly where these black and green wires are going to be coming from? Are you talking a lead from a 4-pin connector or something? This is an area I wish I knew more about, but am really not knowledgeable on.

Nah, the big 20-24 pin connector from the PSU. It's the biggest connector from the PSU and it may look a little different from the one I posted above (since it's a 20 pin diagram).

[][][][][][][][][][][] Here's what a 24 pin may look like. (The green wire is more towards the middle.)
[][][][][][][][][][][]
||||||

I'm at work now, so I can't really take a picture and show you first-hand. I'll try to find an existing pic online for you in the meantime though *edit* Damn, I'm fast - Pics and a tutorial here: http://www.overclock.net/faqs/96712-how-jump-start-powe...

Have you connected the 4pin CPU powercable aswel? You said you have double checked the wirings but just to make sure, cause there has been cases where it hasn't been connected but it took 4 pages to figure it out..  

Ok, that makes sense, thanks. Encouraging point that it's probably not the CPU. That leaves the board, case, RAM, and psu as possible culprits.

My "Troubleshooting a New Build" article:

http://www.tomswiki.com/page/Troubleshooting+a+New+Buil...

It is kind of long and involved if the simple stuff doesn't work, especially since it requires disassembly.

I've had 3 ECS boards go bad in the past 2 weeks. Same basic type problem - everything is plugged in, but nothing receives power. (Yes the PSU I tested w/ did work when I tried it in another system) They we're all socket 775 w/ Snap in Heatsinks... So my finger are killing me after popping processors, ram, etc. out of each board to test the next. And after much painful hardware swapping, the motherboard was the culprit in every failure. Lesson learned: I don't like ECS.

Kari - yeah, the Gigabyte board I have has a 24 pin slot and a 4 pin slot. I have a 20+4 pin connector coming from my PSU. I put (which I think is correct) the 4 pin connector split off and plugged into the 4 pin hole by the CPU, then the 20 pin connector over on the other side attached into the first 20 slots on the 24 slot hole. Here is the board on newegg if you want to see the layout:

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E1681...

I also tried putting the whole 24 pin connector together and putting them into the 24 pin hole, leaving the 4 pin hole by the CPU unconnected. This also did not work, still nothing after pushing the power button.

You might be able to give me some direction here, I admit I am only 99% sure that I have connected the power to the MB properly (as I described above). Maybe I'm supposed to put the 20+4 pin connector into the 24 pin hole and then run a second 4 pin connector from somewhere to the 4 pin hole? I did not see another 4-pin connector anywhere though, which is why I assumed I would only have one of those 4 pin holes attached to power.

EDIT: jsc, thanks, that is a great resource. Need to get more stuff stickied on these forums, I'm sure my question is a common one. The only recent post I could find along these lines was somebody who did not know they had to connect the PWR SW to the MB, and my level of experience is a bit above that.

I think you should plug in the whole 24 pin cable but there should be another 4 pin cable for the cpu..

Yeah, you need to put the full 24 pins into the motherboard. I think some board will run w/ only 20 connected, but it's recommended to use all 24 pins. Now I have a question -

What are the colors of the wires going into the 4 pin connector that you put in the CPU port? It should be 2 yellow and 2 black, but from your saying, it sounds like your taking the additional +4 pin connector from the 20 pin connector, which is usually only put into a 24 pin motherboard slot. If the wires are: red, yellow, orange, and black - you are putting the wrong connector in your CPU power slot.

If you have this psu
http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Power/ToughPower/W01...
it shows clearly that there should be 24 pin atx and 4 pin cpu cable

Kari - Yeah, that is the PSU I have, I see the specs there, but I could have sworn there was no another square 4-pin connector anywhere. I will look at that first when I get home tonight (and I can't answer the question on colors either, at work right now). When I started hooking up the power cables, I had to cut back the outside weavy covering stuff on the 20+4 pin to seperate 4-pin out and connect it because that was the only square/rectangular pin connectors I saw. Maybe I'm going blind though and it's there. Great catch Kari, I'll update when I get home tonight and am able to look for myself. This is the first board I have had that actually had a 24 pin slot instead of a 20 and a 4 (splitting the 20+4 connector). Maybe my paradigm about a MB layout blinded me.

Actually the PSU I have is slightly different, here is the newegg link

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E1681...

Think I know now why I was confused after looking at that one closer. Looks like there is a modular 4+4 pin cable that is used for the PSU. I probably just saw it as 8 pin and didn't think there was another 4-pin to do the job. Have to grab it out of the bag and connect it when I get home and hopefully that will make everything work.

 
Thats always a good place to start troubleshooting these 'nothing happens'-problems, its very easy to check and surprisingly effective  

edit: yeah, some boards need all 8 of the 4+4 to power those quad cores but you'll be fine fine with just 4 of those

Make sure u have connected the power switch 2 cables to the correct Power switch pins in the motherboard, Look for motherboard manual. If is connected correctly try a different power cord cable on your power supply, if still not works u have a faulty motherboard or power supply. Try a different power supply before returning the motherboard

I have seen this bit of confusion come up before. Some PSU's (like mine) label the little 4 pin block as part of the 24 pin main power connector. Apparently, some don't. I am going to add this to my wiki article.

Tierce, thanks. "New build does't work" is a very common problem. The article evolved over several months. I was pasting it into the thread from a Word doc, when, one day while looking for something else, I found the wiki.

Yeah, I have an older raidmax with the 20+4pin connector. The extra 4 pin is actually labeled with an arrow and has groves so it will slip on to the 20 pin connector. From what I'm reading, it looks like he just has the wrong 4 pin connector in the CPU slot. Hopefully nothing got damaged and this is all that is wrong.  

Update in hopes someone catches my second blunder while I try to figure it out myself. Connected the MB correctly to the PSU now, fired it up, looks like everything is on, but I'm not getting a signal to my monitor. Now I'm assuming everything is ok inside. Speaker beeped so it did POST, CPU fan and case fans are spinning, I can hear the hard drive, 8800 GT fan spinning, CDROMs are on. Samsung monitor isn't getting a signal. No idea if the CPU is going for sure or not (Or the RAM).

I have the 8800 GT in the only PCIx16 slot, and a DVI connector going from it to the flat panel. Wondering if the MB is not auto-detecting the

Going to read back through the manuals, anyone have any more ideas, I'd appreciate the help.

*EDIT: Upon playing around, I pushed a button on the monitor and the screen came up. Would have been nice if it had actually come with some instruction to explain that you needed to push that button to switch between Analog and DVI. The little sheet that it did come with said to just plug everything in and turn it on and you would be set.

I would imagine that those 8800gt's have a separate power connection on them as most newer cards do. If this is true, is it connected?