I turned my desktop off last night without anything being abnormal.
Came back to it this morning and nothing.
The only sign of life was that the fans fired up at reduced speed i.e. noise off (default is full speed - a feature of my Asus P5W DH Deluxe).

There was absolutely no signal to either the monitor or my TV.

I went through the usual checks - leads, using a multimeter to check for voltage, swapping GPU slots and I got nothing.

I then decided to try my Hardisk (Western Digital Sata3, 320Gb, 16Mb WD3200KS), GPU (Sapphire X1950GT) and Memory (OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Gold GX XTC Rev 2) on my mates computer and at least try to do some elimination on his Motherboard.

I tested the HD first, no problem. I then did my HD and GPU together, and again, no problem.
I then put in my memory and that is when his computer(my few parts) went nutty. The computer simple failed to respond maybe some slight glitches from the fans but nothing else.

Nearly did a woopsy when I put his memory back in and it fired up and shut down a few seconds later. Uh oh.

When I put my friends computer back together it was fine. Heart attack over.

So, it would seem that the memory is to blame.

First of all I need clarification that it is not a compatibility issue with my mate's M/Board an ASRock P55 pro/usb3.

If that is not a problem then I presume that by a process of elimination it must be my RAM.

Are the symptoms typical of RAM gone bad? Do they go bad like this?

Of course, I've not tested my M/Board or PSU but at the moment my RAM seems the likely suspect.

Any help much appreciated,
Tom.

In my several years experience the most common cause of this is a power supply, though not always, might be the motherboard, but definitely try connecting another power supply first.

I tried to use a spare PSU I had lying around but because it was a cheapo it didn't have a lead for the GPU nor did I have any adaptor cables etc, so it was inconclusive.

I'm will go over and see my mate later and use his PSU instead.

Out of interest will a computer have functionality without any RAM fitted because I want to eliminate mine from the equation? Reason being is that he has an M/B that uses DDR3 while mine are DDR2.

Tom.

if you have more than one stick of RAM, try one at a time, because you won't get anything on the screen without any RAM in the system, it might give you some beeps but that's about it.

Could this lost RAM contact tab be the route of all my problems?

I am having an ongoing problem with my desktop which can be read about HERE.

I bought a second hand motherboard as it was my assumption that it could be the problem. However, today when I was in the process of testing it I happened to look at one of my RAM sticks and saw what is in the photo below. I don't know if this is as a result of my old board or the secondhand board.

What I can tell you is, is that after discovering this I did get the computer started and Windows reactivated with the new(old) motherboard, outside of the case.
However, after putting it all back into the case it is now doing the same thing as in my linked to post.

How might this have happened to the RAM stick?

Is this the cause of all my woes?

Tom.