New mainboard/cpu giving me shit

LaCabra

Recieved my new mainboard and CPU today:

INTEL CORE 2 DUO E4300/ 1.80GHz/ 2MB CACHE/ 800 FSB/ LGA775

Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA PT880 Ultra, 1066MHz FSB, DualDDR2-667 and DDR400

I installed the CPU and assembled everything, my two sticks of DDR1 RAM and 6800GS AGP graphics card. When I switched on the power supply, everything turned on by itself, but I got nothing on the screen. The lights on the keyboard behave as they ought to, one flash as though the system's booting and then I can turn caps lock on and off, but I get nothing on-screen.

Everything behaves exactly the same way if I remove either stick of RAM, or both. I know the video card and RAM are not faulty. The board has no onboard video either so I can't try that, and I have no spare card at the moment in case of some wild incompatibilty with my card.

If I connect an HDD it spins up, basically there's nothing evident wrong other than the fact that I can't see anything.

The other thing that has occurred to me is my power supply just might not be good enough - it's a 400W, fairly cheap one - but it worked fine for my last system and I'd expect to at least be able to get to the BIOS on it.

Monitor works, and yes, it's plugged in. I feel like I've missed something. What else could cause this?

saint2e

Does the monitor have some sort of "cannot find input" message or anything when it's on? Does your video card have it's own fan, and is that spinning when you power on?

LaCabra

With my monitor, it floats No Signal Input around the screen for a bit and then goes on standby if nothing changes, so it's been just an orange light, but I just turned it off and on again to check and, yes, no signal input whether the computer's on or off.

And yes, the video card has a fan, and it is spinning just fine.

LaCabra

My bad - keyboard lights aren't doing anything, when I turn on or hitting caps or numlock. Could have sworn it was earlier in the day, but whatever. Does this help?

tsmvengy

Do you get any post beeps when you turn it on?

My guess is that something isn't seated right. One of the power cables could be loose too.

Try reseating everything (processor too) and then just start it up with the processor and one stick of RAM. See if you get any beeps. Then put the other stick in and try it again (w/o the video card.) Then put the video card in and try it. Also, try the video card w/ just one stick of RAM.

Ganluan

This can be caused because you're missing the extra power connector for either your graphics card or your processor. On the motherboard, there's an extra power connector separate from the regular ATX one that should be near your processor - make sure that's plugged in. As well, make sure if your graphics card requires an extra power connection, that you have that securely fastened.

Nova_C

If you get to the point where you remove the CPU, have a look at the pins. A computer I set up at work had a bent pin on the CPU and it did exactly the same thing.

LaCabra

I've now tried reseating everything, including the CPU (which has no pins on it, they're all on the board, and not bent). I borrowed a fancy power supply from a friend, and swapped out the videocard with another one, and tried someone else's RAM. So I know the power supply, RAM or video card is not at fault here, which, barring any fuckups of mine - and I'm pretty damn sure at this point that I haven't made any - means my new CPU or mainboard is faulty, and I don't know which.

Fuck.

ElectricTurtle

Heh, it's probably the mainboard, when I used to work for a small computer shop we would joke about what unmitigated crap ASRock boards were. They are awful. Ditch that zero and get yourself a hero. I would recommend MSI.

LaCabra

I got this one for a reason, though, it supports DDR1 and DDR2 and AGP and PCI-E. It's a pretty ideal board for me apart from how it doesn't seem to work.

robaal

It might be that the BIOS doesn't like the E4300. If you can, try some other LGA775 CPU (P4/Celeron or a E6xxx C2D) and update the BIOS if it works.

It's also probable that the "AGP" slot doesn't support all AGP cards - try some old PCI card (not PCI Express).

LaCabra

I haven't got access to any other LGA775 CPUs whatsoever, or PCI graphics cards. Been years since I've even seen one.

robaal

You can get old used PCI video cards for very little money on ebay, I'm guessing, and they get handy in cases like this.

Some motherboard manufacturer's will mail you a new BIOS chip, with an updated BIOS, if they know that to be the problem, so try contacting AsRock's support.

LaCabra

Just sent an email to Asrock. But I've tried two cards, isn't the videocard unlikely to be the problem?

ElectricTurtle

More likely in your case than others, because AGP and PCI-E were never intended to work together. The few people that have built such things (also including Biostar), usually include plenty of disclaimers about the plethora of potential conflicts and incompatibilities.

(This is also why more reputable brands have not produced anything with AGP and PCI-E together.)