ComputerBB

Well, I am building a new system... and I've run into a problem... when I turn on the power, everything seems to power up: the fans, the light on the motherboard, the cdr/dvd drive spins and even sounds like it might be trying to boot the CD, the hard disk spins... but there is absolutely no video output... so the monitor stays blank. The motherboard is an ASUS A8V Deluxe with an FX 55 CPU. There is 2GB of memory... This combo with fan was sent as a pre-tested combo from a computer store... meaning, before it left their store, those components were fine. The video card I am using is a GeForce 6600 (pny) AGP. This is taken from my old computer. I also have a CDRW/DVDROM drive and a SATA Hard Drive. So... here's what I have done: I removed the manufacturer's heatsink and fan on the video card and replaced it with another... (I am bulding a low sound computer for home studio recording as well as gaming). I removed the pretested CPU fan and heatsink and replaced it with the low sound one. I placed the motherboard in my low sound case (ATX). I put the video card in the AGP slot. I connected the front panel LEDs and connected the drives... one with IDE (the CD) and one with SATA (the HD). I turn on the power and there is nothing. I've disconnected the drives, and still nothing. I place the video card back in the old motherboard and computer, and it seems to work just fine, with the new heatsink and fan. So... Any ideas what my problem is? Do I have a short somewhere in the motherboard? If so... is that repairable? Could it be some jumpers or that i connected the LED things incorrectly? Is it likely that I ruined the CPU when switching fans? (I was careful with static and have been pretty careful throughout the whole process). I am kind of at a loss as to what I should do next, other than take my whole thing in to have some technician look at it. You guys have any thoughts?

Try to pull out the other components 1 by 1 and see if you get video. I would try the memory first (one chip at a time). You should still get video even without memory. Next, I'd try the drives. See if you can get any video at all with each component removed. I've put together a ton of computers and these types of problems have never been a result of faulty equipment. The likelihood of ESD damage these days is almost impossible.

Make sure your motherboard is set to read from the AGP slot and not the PCI one.

I have just swapped out the motherboard on this system again. The motherboard is a Thunder Bay MS-6721 SIS650GL SDRam No AGP. According to the company I sent the boards back to, they were working fine, and yet I am still getting no video output with this machine again. I pulled all components and swapped the harddrive and still no video output. Even when placing them all back in one at a time still no difference. On one of the previous boards I even swapped the CPU with a similar Celeron process that was functioning in another machine and still not video output. Any ideas where to look next or what might be the cause of this headache? Wayne