New build not booting

[DreamThrall]

I've got this stuff:

Motherboard
CPU
RAM
HDD

The power supply is a 500W that I'd bought before but never used.

I just put it all together and it doesn't seem to boot - everything turns on and there aren't any funny smells, but my monitor won't come out of power save mode. I'm using the onboard video right now for the sake of ruling out a problem with a video card. There aren't any other cards plugged in either.

When I power it on, I can hear the HDD spinning up, and not much else. There doesn't appear to be a power LED on the motherboard.

The only problem I can think of is that I read in the manual that USB keyboards are disabled by default, and I don't have a PS/2 keyboard at the moment. I would think that the screen would at least come up though...

Any suggestions? Thanks!

EDIT: Also, I don't have any case firewire or USB plugged in.

EDIT2: Update - so, it turns out that I'd forgotten to plug the case speaker in, and its actually making what I'd consider to be "continuous long beeps", which according motherboard manual means that the graphics card is not inserted properly. Funny, I don't have a graphics card in there. Fine, I'll put one in there... still no dice.

The manual also says that "continuous short beeps" means that there is a power problem. Though what I'm hearing, in my opinion, is not really by any stretch what I would consider "continuous short beeps", it seems like a much more likely culprit since the power supply is kind of cheap. Well, I tried it with another power supply that I know works and I get the same result.

So, does it sound like the motherboard is DOA?

 

[Sedako]

Try a good ol' CMOS clear by turning off the PC (and switching off the PSU), taking the lithium ion battery out of the mother board for about 10 seconds, then re-inserting it and turning the PC back on.

 

[JFry]

This may sound silly, but have you plugged in the 4 or 8 pin power connector to your mainboard? Should be near the processor.

Also if ram has a problem it can often keep a system from booting up. You can try switching them around if you have more than one stick.

 

[DreamThrall]

Try a good ol' CMOS clear by turning off the PC (and switching off the PSU), taking the lithium ion battery out of the mother board for about 10 seconds, then re-inserting it and turning the PC back on.

Didn't do anything :\

This may sound silly, but have you plugged in the 4 or 8 pin power connector to your mainboard? Should be near the processor.

Yup.

Also if ram has a problem it can often keep a system from booting up. You can try switching them around if you have more than one stick.

Tried that - I swapped them around, tried booting with only one at a time, even tried booting without any memory to see if I'd get a different error... same thing every time.

 

[DreamThrall]

UPDATE: I'm RMAing the motherboard back to newegg for a replacement... blech. On the plus side, I got them to let me RMA the CPU retail box too so I don't have to go buy thermal compound.

 

[Tyguy]

Sometimes a VGA error is the result of the motherboard not being grounded

 

[No Limit]

If you are going to rma the motherboard RMA the cpu also in case you haven't. This could very well be a CPU issue.

When you get everything back install the motherboard and CPU and one stick of memory and nothing else. See if that boots up. If it does install the rest of your hardware.

 

[DreamThrall]

Yeah, I RMA'd the CPU/hsf too so I wouldn't have to clean it off and buy my own thermal compound. Shipped out with UPS this afternoon... hopefully the turnaround won't be too long.