New Build Won't Boot - Experienced Builder

[Lord Gornak]

I'm finally at a loss with everything I've tried with my new budget system build, first problem I've had in my lifetime total of about 80 or so builds. System powers up fine, fans spin up, phase LEDs on my Gigabyte board stay at 4 for about 15 seconds and then disappear, no POST. I've disconnected everything except for the video card (swapped it with a discrete PCI card to rule the video card out), swapped 3 individual sticks of memory, and 4-pin ATX is plugged in. I cannot for the life of me determine why the PC won't POST, and the first version of the BIOS is supposed to support my processor out of the box. Specs below, ideas???

MOBO: GA-EP45-UD3LR
CPU: Q8400
Memory: GEIL DDR2-800 (plus several other trial sticks)
Video Card: 9800-GX2
PSU: PCP&C Silencer 610

 

[shabaa]

After looking on Gigabyte's site at your board and specs I have found tht the first version of the bios (F2 version) does not support your processor. The processor that you are using is supported by bios version F5. Without being able to boot and find what version that you have this would be difficult to find out, unless you have a processor that is supported by the F2 bios that you can drop in and check. Other than that the only other thing that I can see that may be a problem would be either a power supply or the board mounting screws are too tight. That is assuming that all other components are good. Good luck!

 

[Lord Gornak]

Thank Shabaa, I was looking at the wrong motherboard on Gigabyte's site when I first did the research. I actually swapped the Q8400 out with my old Pentium D 805 and it would shut down every 5 seconds, most likely a heat issue with that old beast. Tried a Celeron 420, got into BIOS, updated via Q-Flash, put Q8400 in, worked great. Thanks!!!

 

[shabaa]

That is what the Tom's forums are here for...... help and support.

 

[Lord Gornak]

Okay, had it up and running on the motherboard box, then put it in my case. Connected everything, and at POST I get no display, just a short beep and then a long buzzing noise. I immediately assumed a short, so I took the board back out of the case and tried it on the motherboard box. I get the exact same problem now when I start it up with the motherboard on the motherboard box, I have only the video card and one stick of memory plugged in. 12 volt 4-pin is of course plugged in, as is CPU fan which spins up fine. I have swapped video cards and memory as well. I also tried booting with no memory and I do get the expected error beeps associated with no memory installed. I'm thinking the motherboard might be damaged, any thoughts???

 

[Lord Gornak]

This motherboard has dual-bios, do you think it's possible that when I installed the motherboard into my case that I inadvertently cleared the CMOS and caused the motherboard to revert to the previous BIOS?

 

[Chrcoo1991]

Pull out the battery, let it sit for ten minutes and try your Celeron 420 back in it and see. Update when you've done that.

 

[Lord Gornak]

Put the Celeron back in after I cleared CMOS, then updated the BIOS again. The clear CMOS pins are almost smack against the PCI slot where I originally installed my sound card so I'm guessing I must have contacted the pins when I installed it. I put my 8400 back in, got into BIOS, and reset the settings to optimum because it still had all of the settings configured for the Celeron, Good to Go!
Been re-installing all of my software in the brief time I've had to play with this build over the past few days since it's been up and running, will being overclocking soon.