Is it the CPU, or the mobo?

Spike · Apr 10, 2005

I spent the best part os a day today taking an old pentium(ish) case, in pretty much AT form factor, and hacking it into an appropriate shape to take a full ATX mobo, with hardrives, power supply, and cd roms/rw's.

I did this to make use of the old hardware I have lying around, to try to make a 1ghz machine on the cheap, to replace a friends PII 350Mhz.

I know he hard drive was good, as was the RAM I used, through a selection of legacy graphics cards I know one of them was good (being the one I've put back into the rig I'm on now.), and I know the mouse and keyboard and power supply were good.

What I'm not sure about is the Asrock K7VT2 mobo (which worked on last use but has been handled a fair bit since), and the AMD Duron 1Ghz which was fine on last use, but has been rattleing around in a draw full of papers and associated stuff for the last 6 months.

On booting the machine, the CPU Fan spins, and you can hear the HDD spin up and read, but then all is quiet except for the CPU fan which continues to run. There is no Beep from the system speaker (though I don't know for sure that the system speaker is good, but it's a fair bet it is), and most importantly, the monitor is not switched on from standby at all. there's not a trace of graphics being produced from either the AGP or PCI slots (depending on card used)

I'm doing it on the cheap because I'm completely skint atm, and so I'm hoping with this thorough explanation that someone might be able to tell me which piece of hardware is the one that needs replacing, or what may otherwise be wrong.

howard_hopkinso · Apr 10, 2005

Hello Spike.

Probably the mobo is bad. My girlfriends system was exactly the same I.E hdd, fans, including the cpu fan all working as was the opticle drives,and video card, but no signal to the monitor. turned out to be a dead mobo also an Asrock K7S41GX.

Regards Howard

Samstoned · Apr 11, 2005

could be the boards been laying around and battery needs a little boost
check battery if good do a cmos jumper with the video card removed
I did this to a old dell and got it running.
past that no video on my systems start with
bios configed wrong
bad or overclocked memory for hardware this is the biggest issue
bad video card (not supported by MB)
bad cpu and last the pci chipset on MB goes bad rarest issue
PS check for leaky caps

all above of course is just my opinion form my experiance's

zephead · Apr 11, 2005

asrock is known for making many a shoddy product...

try taking the board out of the case and place it on a peice of wood or a towel, attack the psu, keyboard, and a video card and then attempt to boot it. if it won't work out of the case either then it's time to get a new board (another asrock would be a poor choice).

luvhuffer · Apr 12, 2005

Is the CPU fan connected to the right connector on the mobo? Check the CPU and make sure you didn't break off a pin while it was crashing around in the drawer. Make sure you have mounted it only in the holes with the little metal rings around them, and that you are not shorting out on an unused riser you didn't remove. Other than that, I'll have to go with samstoned on checking the CMOS battery. also you are booting up with keyboard and mouse attached? Try it without either. It may be a bad PS/2 port or USB connector.

OGGBoy · Apr 18, 2005

Did the mobo change fix your girlfriends computer problem? I am experiencing the same this with this PC I am fixing. Only thing different is that once in a blue moon, the machine would actual go past the POST. But not boot totally.

blaacksheep · Apr 19, 2005

:knock: Beg, borrow, or steal another CPU and try it out... then post back.

Is it the CPU, or the mobo?

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