I am by no means an expert at this but I have built quite a few computers and have never had a problem like this. A neighbor came to me with a dieing E-Machine, my first thought was power supply. So after swapping power supplies, cpu, ram etc I believe I narrowed it down to the motherboard. After looking around I found a direct replacement for it (FIC-AU31) but it cost over $140. Then I found something that he liked on egghead a biostar M7NCG 400 for a god price (he wanted a decent built in vieo card on a micro atx board).
I ordered one up and installed in the E-Machine case, installed ram, the cpu, ram and jumpers for the power switch. Plugged in the PS and hit the button, it acted like it wanted to work but I could not get any video, I powered it off. I tried to start it again and no dice, I unplugged and plugged it back in and the power kicked on immediately but then the cpu fan started flucuating around, no video at all.
No problem I sent it back to egghead and they sent me another one, I have gotten bad motherboard through the mail before, it does not happen a lot but it does happen. I get the new one and this time set it up on the foam pad with just the CPU, ram, power switch and power supply and it appeared to want to boot like it should, I saw the bios and everything. Then I proceeded to install it into the case with the same set up, like I said I have done this a bunch before I was very careful not to shock anything. I plugged it in and it started doing the same same thing the first motherboard was doing. I removed it from the case and tried the original setup again and still nothing.
I was wondering if anybody has seen a Power Supply do this before or could it be something else. I hate to think that it may of blown 2 motherboards up and I do not know if egghead will give me another one. I feel really stupid not noticing this before, I did test out the ram and cpu in another machine but I did not have a maching that did not use the 4 pin power adapter as well so that and the case are the only things I truely did not test. I was just wondering if anybody has experinced this before, I do have better power supply's laying around that I could throw in there the next time, but then I am still afraid the case may be the root cause all though I cannot figure out how it could be?
Sorry for the long report I just like to give as much info as possible in these situations, I am not normally confused by something like I am right now. The original system is an E-Machine T2825 with 2800+ Athlon XP and 512 mb of cheap ram, I have swapped this out with better stuff and no luck. Thanks in advance for any insight, I will feel a lot better trying to replace this motherboard if I know for sure what the real culprit is here.
By the way outsanding site and forum, I just stumbled across this. I will try and keep an eye on this site and help anybody else out as much as I can. I am by all means an expert but I do get to play with a lot of neat things through my job.
I ordered one up and installed in the E-Machine case, installed ram, the cpu, ram and jumpers for the power switch. Plugged in the PS and hit the button, it acted like it wanted to work but I could not get any video, I powered it off. I tried to start it again and no dice, I unplugged and plugged it back in and the power kicked on immediately but then the cpu fan started flucuating around, no video at all.
No problem I sent it back to egghead and they sent me another one, I have gotten bad motherboard through the mail before, it does not happen a lot but it does happen. I get the new one and this time set it up on the foam pad with just the CPU, ram, power switch and power supply and it appeared to want to boot like it should, I saw the bios and everything. Then I proceeded to install it into the case with the same set up, like I said I have done this a bunch before I was very careful not to shock anything. I plugged it in and it started doing the same same thing the first motherboard was doing. I removed it from the case and tried the original setup again and still nothing.
I was wondering if anybody has seen a Power Supply do this before or could it be something else. I hate to think that it may of blown 2 motherboards up and I do not know if egghead will give me another one. I feel really stupid not noticing this before, I did test out the ram and cpu in another machine but I did not have a maching that did not use the 4 pin power adapter as well so that and the case are the only things I truely did not test. I was just wondering if anybody has experinced this before, I do have better power supply's laying around that I could throw in there the next time, but then I am still afraid the case may be the root cause all though I cannot figure out how it could be?
Sorry for the long report I just like to give as much info as possible in these situations, I am not normally confused by something like I am right now. The original system is an E-Machine T2825 with 2800+ Athlon XP and 512 mb of cheap ram, I have swapped this out with better stuff and no luck. Thanks in advance for any insight, I will feel a lot better trying to replace this motherboard if I know for sure what the real culprit is here.
By the way outsanding site and forum, I just stumbled across this. I will try and keep an eye on this site and help anybody else out as much as I can. I am by all means an expert but I do get to play with a lot of neat things through my job.