hello.

was given a old computer. its a GA-7N400 mobo with an athlon something cpu. the psu is something called PTI.

no video card, ram or HDD is installed .. not any pci cards.

When i press the go button, the psu fan spins as does the cpu fan. they two dvd drives spin up and can be opened and closed. the power light on the mobo is light.

but there are no boot noises. no beeps. the fan just continue to spin. i tried plugging a video card in and the monitor just told me there was no signal.

with no beeps i cant diagnose anything. i dont have any ddr ram so i cant install any. i should still hear beeps with no ram and no video.

I tried plugging in a different psu - and the same happened. but my spare is old, and doesnt have the extra little 12V connector. so maybe nothing happened because its under powered.?

is there a way to tell whether it's a mobo problem or cpu problem without replacing the cpu? ive reset the bios and taken the battery out a few times. and ive turned off all the overclocking switches.

thanks lads

oh.. i shouldve said.. when i take the cpu out.. still no beeps. but when i take the heatsink off the cpu.. the mobo shuts itself off after a second or so.. as it should. hopefully that means the cpu is dead?

So it's just a motherboard, processor and power supply with no ram or hdd installed? On my Asus motherboard I need to have some ram installed for it to even boot, otherwise it just beeps and then sits there with the hard drive light on (no activity though). On my Soyo motherboard it won't even beep without memory. I'm guessing based on your comments that you don't have any ram installed.

If you do have ram installed, make sure the computer is off and it's unplugged form the wall. You can even unplug the psu from the motherboard and pull out the ram and processor. Re-seat the processor and the ram and try starting the machine. You'll need to add a video card if it doesn't have any onboard video if you want to see if anything is happening.

youre right.. there's no ram. it will only take DDR ram and i only have DDR2 and SDRAM. i didn;t want to buy any if the mobos dead. ill replace the CPU if thats the problem.. but if the mobos dead i'll chuck it out. id presumed it'd just boot and beep at me to say theres no ram. but it doesnt. i might stick it in the cupboard in case i happen across some freeish DDR.

thanks for reply

Does the mobo actually have a speaker builtin? This may not be the case and thus the reason you can't hear anything. The computer should beep intermittently without RAM.

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Girkers

shut up.

(no.. there's no speaker. i stuck some ram in and a 8x agp video card and it worked a treat. happily.. i got the the mobo, cpu, psu, dl dvd burner and case for $5)

stevetv,

I am glad it worked out for you, I feel your pain sometimes. As a tech it sometimes the simplest things that we miss.

Great to hear it is working for you, hopefully this thread will help someone else in the future so they don't have to feel your pain.

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Girkers