Recycled pc having boot issues

[t-zack]

My motherboard on my old computer went bad, but the video card and cpu were still good, so I figured I would reuse them in another build.

The card is an 8800GTX and the processor is a e6700 core 2 duo.

I got an asus p5n-d mobo, corsair ddr2 gaming ram, a 320gb western digital drive, and a blu ray player for the new build. After putting the parts in and wiring everything, the computer wont turn on at all. The front panel is right, I know, because I used one of those newfangled q-connectors and then tried it without it. The power cables are all secured, and the power supply appears to be working because there is a green light on the bottom right corner of the mobo which lights up whenever the psu is plugged in and switched on. Does anyone have any thoughts? The only things I can come up with is either a bad hard drive or the power button is broken, or the fact that my 8800 is pcix16 and this board is pci 2.0, but I thought that they were backwards compatible.

 

[t-zack]

Really? I thought because the board is lighting up that the power must be reaching the system.

 

[rwpritchett]

Things to check:

#1 Remove the power button wires from the front panel connector on the motherboard and use a screwdriver or other metal object to bridge the pins. If it starts your power button is faulty. If nothing happens, move on.

#2 Do the "paperclip test" to see if the PSU fires up. This involves bridging the green wire to any black wire on the unplugged 24-pin main connector. The PSU should start up (fans spinning). If that doesn't happen, your PSU is definitely dead. If it fires up... it still might have issues with the rails.

#3 Breadboard the system. Install only the bare minimum on the motherboard while it is out of the case sitting on a non-conductive material (like cardboard). 1 stick of RAM, CPU, and video card. If it works breadboarded, you have a case short.

 

[daship]

Make sure you got the 24 pin, and 4/8 pin power plugged in, lots of people over look the 4/8 pin.

If its the old PSU, maybe the mobo was good but the PSU was dead.

The light on the motherboard only means the PSU is putting out power on the 5v, the 12v is the one that dies.

Since the new motherboard is relatively old tech, make sure the bios you have supports your CPU.

 

[t-zack]

Great, thanks for the help. I have the 4 pin in and I am certain that the front panel is correct, so tomorrow I'll try breadboarding the system as well as the paperclip test. One more question, how would I go about bridging the power button?