Help with new Athlon X2 / Asus AN8-SLi pls!

[neochill]

Hi all,

I'm at my wits end. About a month ago i splashed out on a new system with the following:

Mobo: Asus A8N-SLi Motherboard
CPU: Athlon X2 3800+
RAM: 2x 256mb (Paired) Corsair XMS3200
PSU: Akasa Ultra Quiet 460W Paxpower (ATX2.0)
GFX: HIS IceQ 2 Radeon X850XT 256mb Turbo
HDD: 1x Maxtor DiamondMax 120gb UltaATA IDE & 1x Maxtor DiamondMax 120gb SATA

I've built my own systems for the last 5 years so I like to think i know what i'm doing but this has got me beaten. When I put it all together and power on I get the green LED on the mobo light up and the fans spin up but nothing else - no screen output and no beep codes. I've connected both the 24pin ATX connetor and the 4-pin 12v connector, i've reseated the RAM in every possible combination, i've reseated the gfx card, i've reseated the CPU. I've taken the mobo out the case and run it barebones on a static bag with just ram, cpu and gfx in it and still nothing. At this stage I thought it might be a faulty component so I returned all the items for an RMA. The results of the RMA were that all components were functioning correctly - i even spoke to the tech guy as he tested all the components together! I can't see where to go from here so i'd appreciate the help of anyone here and if you live near Cambridge, UK your more than welcome to a pint or 5 if you can sort it!

Hope for some replies soon,

Cheers, neochill

[Olly1234]

Sounds annoying...Plug the power in and make sure you connect firstly the internal speaker plug, the tiny little ones that go on the pins, and then connect some powered speakers to the audio out, these boards will tell you wats wrong with them vocally as far as i recall. Clear the Bios with the jumper to make sure it isn't playign around. Leave everything else out first time including Ram, graphics the lot and power up, now you should get some beeps, also make sure you haven't got a spacer where there is no screw hole in the MB. If you get beeps then put he ram back in and power on, should still get beeps, then put the graphics back etc one by one and see what happens

[kempez]

Start off with a barebones system. Plug only HDD, vid card, optical, 1 x RAM in.

Make sure all four (mine has four: molex, FDD, 24pin + 4pin) connectors are plugged in.

Once you've done this you should be able to get into the BIOS and change some stuff.

[Wiczy]

A friend had a similiar problem....just use one stick of ram and clear the cmos...it will then boot just fine and you can add the other stick.

Apparently it has to do with the ram trying to run @ 1T

Good luck.

[dangel]

Hi m8,

I've got basically the same gear and i'm in the Cambridge area - can i be of any help?

[dangel]

Clearing CMOS good idea but i'd start with just cpu, one stick of ram and graphics alone. One stick means it's not in dual channel which should mean 1T timings are ok (1T is not stable on mine either) so that's good advice to get into POST so you can change it to 2T.

[Wiczy]

Yeah Dangel i just suggested the cmos clear because it's something i would have done myself but as you say it may well not be neccessary

[plesuvius]

Any chance you can borrow a friends CPU to flash the BIOS up to X2 compatible?

TBH i dont think this'll fix it but if it was my system, i'd try it anyway....