Computer wont boot (powers up led and fan but no beep or display)

SoulVision

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Sep 3, 2010
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Hey everyone,

Just started building my second computer and was hoping you could help me. Running into a bit of problems getting it to, well, actually work.

Basically when I give it power, the LEDs come on and the fans power on and all that fun stuff. I first had everything hooked up and when I did it, the power would go out right away. I found out the CPU wasn't seated right so I fixed that and tried again and it would power up. I hook up my monitor and immediately got No Display on both DVI and HDMI input (my board or card doesn't have VGA).

After looking around, I also determined I don't hear a POST beep. Now I never really even thought about this or considered it or anything; where does that POST beep come from? I don't have speakers hooked up so I'm not sure what does it.

Anyway, I've tried taking everything but the processor PSU and MOBO and still heard no beeps at all. Once again, how do I hear the beep?

I'm just so confused...have no clue what could be wrong. I mean is it possible I shouldn't be hearing the beep, and it's just something display wise? If so what could that be? I've tried a diff monitor.

Here's my setup:

COOLER MASTER Storm Sniper SGC-6000-KXN1-GP Black Steel, ABS Plastic, Mesh bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (New off Newegg)
ABS SL series SL1050 1050W Continuous @50°C ,80 PLUS SILVER Certified,Modular Cable Design (New off Newegg)
ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 Motherboard (I ordered a NEW ASUS P6X58D-E off eBay and they sent me this instead, but I heard this was better anyway? :p)
Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601950 (New off Newegg)
CORSAIR Cooling Hydro Series CWCH50-1 120mm High Performance CPU Cooler (New off Newegg)
Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1CCA 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (New off Newegg)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5970 2 GB HD-597A-CNB9 (eBay)
2xNoctua NF-P12-1300 120mm CPU Cooler and Case Fan (for cooler - New off eBay)
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (One of my HD's from the first PC)
ASUS VW246H Glossy Black 24" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor(New off Newegg)

Thanks in advance guys I really appreciate it.
 
Work through our standard checklist and troubleshooting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-read-posting-boot-problems
I mean work through, not just read over it. We spent a lot of time on this. It should find most of the problems.

If not, continue.

I have tested the following beeps patterns on Gigabyte, eVGA, and ECS motherboards. Other BIOS' may be different.

Breadboard - that will help isolate any kind of case problem you might have.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/262730-31-breadboarding

Breadboard with just motherboard, CPU & HSF, case speaker, and PSU. You do have a case speaker installed, right? If not, you really, really need one. If your case or motherboard didn't come with a system speaker, you can buy one here:
http://www.cwc-group.com/casp.html

Make sure you plug the CPU power cable in.

I alway breadboard a new build. It takes only a few minutes, and you know you are putting good parts in the case.

You can turn on the PC by momentarily shorting the two pins that the case power switch goes to. You should hear a series of long, single beeps indicating memory problems. Silence indicates a problem with (in most likely order) the PSU, motherboard, or CPU.

Remember, at this time, you do not have a graphics card installed so the load on your PSU will be reduced.

If no beeps:
Running fans and drives and motherbord LED's do not necessarily indicate a good PSU. In the absence of a single short beep, they also do not indicate that the system is booting.

At this point, you can sort of check the PSU. Try to borrow a known good PSU of around 550 - 600 watts. That will power just about any system with a single GPU. If you cannot do that, use a DMM to measure the voltages. Measure between the colored wires and either chassis ground or the black wires. Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire: 5 volts always on. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.

You can turn on the PSU by completely disconnecting the PSU and using a paperclip or jumper wire to short the green wire to one of the neighboring black wires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4&feature=youtube_gdata

This checks the PSU under no load conditions, so it is not completely reliable. But if it can not pass this, it is dead. Then repeat the checks with the PSU plugged into the computer to put a load on the PSU.

If the system beeps:
If it looks like the PSU is good, install a memory stick. Boot. Beep pattern should change to one long and several short beeps indicating a missing graphics card. Silence or long single beeps indicate a problem with the memory.

Insert the video card and connect any necessary PCIe power connectors. Boot. At this point, the system should POST successfully (a single short beep). Notice that you do not need keyboard, mouse, monitor, or drives to successfully POST.

Now start connecting the rest of the devices starting with the monitor, then keyboard and mouse, then the rest of the devices, testing after each step. It's possible that you can pass the POST with a defective video card. The POST routines can only check the video interface. It cannot check the internal parts of the video card.

 

SoulVision

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Hey jsc,

Yes of course, I went through that list first thing and made sure I had tried all of those things. Same results.

And zipzoomflyhigl, first off my post isnt even that long so not sure why you're calling it a "book" :p Anyway, yes thats plugged in, I also took the cover off the other 4 pins because I had 8 pins, and yes the power supply is plugged in too.

 

sleepking

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where does that POST beep come from? is from the speaker that came with your case my HAF 922 came with one and it goes on your mobo. the hand book will tell you were to plug it in. How was the cpu not seated right?