Help please!

[nortonc2000]

Hi all,
I'm trying to help a friend out with an issue he is having with his graphics card. It seems like there is no power getting to it from the motherboard. I'm not sure of the exact model but it's fairly old and doesn't require power directly from the PSU. The issue is that when the vga cable is plugged in, the monitor says no input. Also the fan is not spinning on the card. However when I tried the card in my own pc, the fan was spinning and the card outputted to the monitor no problem.

On his machine, there is power getting to the motherboard because the CPU and case fans are both spinning ok. Could it be that the PCI-E slot is in some way fried which is why he is getting no power to his card?

You help is much appreciated!
Thanks

Chris

 

[nortonc2000]

Also, nearly forgot. We tried the vga from the onboard graphics and that didnt work either!
Cheers!

 

[MagicPants]

There's more than one power connection to the mobo. I don't think the fans use the same rail as the pci-e slots. I'd check the connections again.

 

[momazboy]

this could be a number of things,first i would double check connections including ram, then i would try another psu(Ive seen psu's that were bad and still turned fans on),Worst case could even be cpu.

 

[nortonc2000]

Oh, I didnt think of the CPU. So it could really be down to that? Before I took a look, my friend actually took the heatsink and fan off the cpu and in the process, took the cpu out (it was stuck to the heatsink). He then pushed the whole assembly back down onto the cpu socket and at that point the machine wouldnt start properly at all - the fans started for 5 secs then stopped whirring. We took the cpu out, cleaned it and applied new thermal paste then popped it back with fan and heatsink. At this point the pc did make an effort to start up - cpu and case fans stayed on.

All of this aside though, could the cpu cause the issues with graphics card getting no power?

The other comments about the psu seem possible. Or could it be a motherboard issue maybe?

Thanks so far for all your comments guys, it's very much appreciated