Can you turn on a motherboard without a CPU?

TheSonicRetard

I have an old Socket 754 AMD 64 processor and motherboard that I'm trying to salvage. I had always assumed the motherboard it was attached to was fried, as the PC ran until I stuck in a video card which caused everything to suddenly stop working. My assumption was that the video card somehow fried the mobo... wrong voltage or something. Anyways, the PC flat out won't turn on.

So I ordered a new mobo, popped in the CPU, and tried to fire it up... and nothing. The PSU never turns on, it's like the whole thing is dead. I know the PSU works (I can try it on other PCs and it works fine), so the only thing which could be FUBAR would be the CPU. If the CPU was fried, however, wouldn't the mobo still be able to turn on? Shouldn't my HDD spin, my PSU fan kick in... something, anything?

I'm stumped as to the problem.

Azio

Short answer: no

ronya

No, your motherboard won't turn on with a fried CPU. It needs the CPU to talk to the rest of the stuff. Your PSU's internal fan should be running, though.

ArcSyn

Depending on the motherboard, yes. If it turns on, it will give you an error beep that says you have no CPU. It won't hurt anything because it will just sit there and beep, but it will at least let you know that it can do as much as power on the PSU and figure out there's no CPU.