Thread: HELP! starting up for the first time. nothing happening.

A friend of mine had the same thing on his test bench a few days ago, he wasn't giving it enough power. Make sure it's not being under-powered.

Originally Posted by treetop777

Something like that happened to me; fan spinning but no startup - i had the P4 connector unpluged.

i do not see a p4 connection on my board.

Originally Posted by colin

A friend of mine had the same thing on his test bench a few days ago, he wasn't giving it enough power. Make sure it's not being under-powered.

i am using the 120w psu that came in my case untile i move it into the car and switch over to my opus 320w. with nothing plugged in but the cpu (35w) and 1gb of ram it still didn't work right.

power led is coming on now (was a connector issue), cpu fan turns on, harddrive spins up, usb optical drive works, ps2 key board blinks.

just no beeps or video out.

Is there an onboard speaker or do you need to attach the case speaker? Make sure there's something for it to play sound out of to alert you. Remove the RAM alltogether and try to force the system to beep to be sure that you're at least capable of getting them.

Does the screen turn blank or does it just stay in a low-power state?

im not sure if there is an onboard speaker. i couldnt find it in and of the diagrams or see any mention of one. everybody just sounded so 100% that it should beep that i didn't question it (publicly).

right now i am powering everything in house using a spare pc moitor which is plugged into the wall, so power there is not an issue. i just can't get any kind of signal.

i boxed everything back up for tongiht before i got too frustrated (getting wise in my old age). when i get back on it tomorrow i'll try to find some speakers or headphones or something.

to me it seems like everything is working as it should be, minus the beeps and video. thanks for your help guys and feel free to make some overnight suggestions.

Originally Posted by FusionFanatic

the "120w PSU" may not be enough for it. try it with your OPUS 320w PSU.

remember, total PSU wattage does NOT matter. each individual power rail has a maximum current (amperage) output. if any power rail cannot provide enough power, then the system will have issues (including power-on issues).

that motherboard's power consumption (per owner's manual) to "enter BIOS (STABLE)" is:

• +3.3V - 2.42A
• +5V - 2.74A
• +12V - 2.97A

your CPU may only draw 35w, but the motherboard draws power too. if any power rail on that "120w PSU" outputs less current than the motherboard+CPU needs, then your system will not boot.

i considered that also. the opus is on the way so i had kind of planned not to get too worried until it got here and i tried that out.

to make things even more mysterious i could not find any info the included power supply so i could plug it into the rail voltage calculator thing-a-ma-jig.

bump for a new day full of new ideas. anyone?



*edit - heres a pic of 2 connentors that come off the psu/board power harness. i don't know if they go anywhere. they are all run parallel off of connections that go into the board so i figured they were for alternate setups.

ok, my first idea of the day was to use another psu i had laying around. it wasn't a huge upgrade in power (145w) but it did have specs to work with.

12v - 4.2a
5v - 18a
3.3v - 13a

processor specs:

Mobile Core 2 Duo (Penryn) - Core 2 Duo-T8100 (dual 2.1GHz - 2x 1.5MB)
Core Voltage - 1.2V (1V~1.25V)
Vmax - 1.45V
Max. Core Amp. - 44A
Thermal Design Power - 35W
Max. Cover Temp. - 105° C

i'm not 100% sure how to put this info, combined with the (pay version) psu calculator, but seeing as the same thing happened with this drastically underpowered (on the 12v rail) psu i'm geussing thats the issue.

*edit - so i was all happy and content with it being a power supply issue, then as i was taking it out i found the specs.

12v - 8a
5v - 7a
3.3v - 7a

looks to me like that should have been enough with it stripped down but i geuss we'll see...