MSI K8N Neo not booting

[bobsyerukle]

Hmmm maybe i'm just stupid ...

Ok so i went out yesterday and bought myself a new system.

specs

MSI K8N Neo mobo
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
2 X 512 MB PC3200 400 Mhz RAM (some generic brand)
GeCube Radeon 9600XT gfx
Still running an old 20 GB hdd as my main drive with an 80Gb maxtor drive as slave
old 50 X cdrom drive
Samsung DVD R drive

Ok now that i've got that out of the way the problem i'm having is that this thing just ain't booting. When i turn it on i get the pretty splash screen that says to press TAB to run POST or to hit DEL to enter BIOS Setup.

All well and good but neither if these keys seem to do anything. :knock:

Is this potentially a RAM problem? as i have seen a lot of posts on various forums suggesting that. Or could it be as simple and as stupid as not having a new fancy case fan? the one in my box (which is left over from my old system) only has a two pin plug, the mobo has 3 pin plugs? would not having this plugged in prevent the system from booting? i remember from an old pc i played with a while back that it wouldn't boot if one of the fans wasn't plugged in.

Please help I really don't want to find out i've just chucked my money away.

 

[tbrunt3]

How big is the power supply for this ?? and what maker this is overlooked a lot ..

 

[Justin]

It's good news that you are at least getting to the boot logo.

I would say double-check your keyboard to make sure it is plugged in.

After this, remove one stick of ram and unplug your hard drives, optical drives, and floppy drives (The data cables to them). Remove all extra peripherals (additional PCI cards, connected USB devices, etc)

Try booting again, if it still fails, swap the ram stick.

If it still fails, you may have a defective board and/or cpu. But, try those first and report back.

 

[bobsyerukle]

How big is the power supply for this ?? and what maker this is overlooked a lot ..

350 Watt as for the manufacturer, couldn't tell you, i'm at work so not near my pc. It is a bit of a cheap PSU, had to get it urgently a couple of months back as my old one, on my previous system finally gave up the ghost.

 

[tbrunt3]

One other thing to try is to make sure your heatsink is seated proper on the cpu .. as well as good thermo paste is applied between the two.

as was said run memory test this one here is good..

http://www.memtest86.com/

if all the above fails pull out the BIOS battery for a little bit the place it back in let us know