purchased a new system, installation was 100 percent problem free but start up, or lack there of, has been 100 percent problematic.

push the power button, and absolutely no power at all. its not like its turning on then immediately shutting off, nothing happens at all when i hit the power button.

yesterday, it would flash a bit of light, and the keyboard would light up for a sec but today absolutely nothing.

ive narrowed it down to the mostly likely culprits and i think its either mobo or psu, but im going with the psu as the box was badly damaged on delivery. I kno its a solid psu, but nothing is good when its been mishandled and abused.

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775
MSI NX8800GTS 512M OC GeForce 8800GTS
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX ATX12V V2.2 550W Power Supply - Retail

Probably PSU then.

Are you sure nothing is shorting out? Have you used standoffs so your motherboard isn't touching your case?

If neither of those, then I would say it would be a PSU issue.

theres no short and of course i used the raisers ;P

neways i was able to take the psu and use it in another system i have, a78nx mobo (classic for **** sure) and the psu would start up for ten seconds before dieing. now, i have mixed emotions from this result. for one, i kno the psu is faulty, but the fact it booted up for ten seconds leads me to believe that the MOBO might be fried too?

I stopped useing/buying or telling people to use Antec 10 years ago.
Get a real PSU...get a PC Power & Cooling PSU or at least the next step down a Silverstone like Falcon Northwest puts into thier 5-15K USD custom builds.

I always wonder why people over the years spend the big bucks for every part of thier system and turn around and use a crap PSU which is the #1 most important thing to use.

Its called cutting corners. Most people can understand speed for memory, cpu or a video card to be important and can visually see the difference in the charts listed or on the retail boxes themselves.

Power supplies is the most misleading item to buy for a pc. The average user doesnt know that "not all 500 watt psus are created equal" or any other voltage psu for that matter so they buy whatever has the voltage advertised at the best price.

Its an honest mistake and I would be confident to say that we have all bought a cheapo psu at some point to save a buck without realizing what we were really doing....


After all, a what is a watt is a what, right?

To be honest, I did buy a cheapo PSU once. Learned my lesson and never repeated it. I once read that a person should add up the cost of the computer build and figure 10% of that for a PSU. In other words, a $1000 build should have a $100 PSU and a $2000 build should have a $200 PSU, and so forth. Still have to read reviews and buy the best PSU you can for the money, but it is a guideline. Fortunately, PSU cost have come down a bit so that you might not have to spend the 10%, but the basic idea remains. Don't go cheap on the PSU. Like ZOldDude says, the PSU is the #1 most important thing. Without it, everything else is just a pile of parts.

That's because 10 years ago Antec was crap, they've turned around since the NeoHE and Earthwatts came out, using a quality OEM like SeaSonic instead of using cheap FSP and CWT units(Although FSP and CWT make some good stuff, they make crappy stuff on the low end also). Although he did say he used a Corsair unit, a unit which has got plenty of good reviews around the net and is hardly low quality. My guess is you just got unlucky with the power supply and it damaged something else, but I can't really tell you for sure what it damaged.