Second Build and it wont power on!

[rmerina]

Hi guys. I recently had my laptop fail on me and have had to resort to using my OLD OLD AMD Athlon 550mhz monster for the last couple of months until I am now able to build a new PC.

Heres some specs on the NEW ONE:

MOBO: Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800 65W
RAM: Kingston 2x512mb DDR2 533MHz
VID: PNY NVidia GeForce 7600
HDD: Seagate 300gb SATA
CASE: Raidmax Smilodon (still using the 500w PSU supplied)

The problem is that it doesnt want to power on for me. I have gone back through and checked and re-checked everything! When I turn the ON/OFF switch on the back to ON I get a little flicker of light from one of the audio out ports. Then if I short the PWR_ON with a screwdriver or hit the power button, I get some lights inside the case for about a nano-second and thats it. If i push the power button again i get nothing. I have even tried to disco everything except the bare necessities just to get the mobo and cpu to power up for me and nothing happens! I Have a hunch that the PSU isnt going to cut it, as its the one that came with it. I had this problem with the last system I built, but I am not sure if it is the same symptoms.


Thanks for everyones help, and I DID search on here before asking a question (I own my own forums @ www.ka-t.org and know how annoying it is to get the same question all the time).

My AIM is RickMer2

Thanks
Rick

[Jester]

PSU's that come with cases traditionaly suck wind. My best guess is that your PSU is bad, and you may have shorted out other components. The whole spark of light in the audio ports is not good. Get a new PSU slap it in and see if that fixes everything. Look at Xcilo, or enermax. There are other quality PSU's out there but the names escape me. On of them starts with F... Hopefully you didnt fry any of the ram, or cpu.

[rmerina]

When I refer to a spark of light, I mean its one of the informational LED's on the back panel, It actually coming out of the LAN plug which is completely normal.

What are the damn chances I have 2 bad PSU's out of 2 ive owned ?

Anyone else have any ideas?

[Jester]

The chances that two are bad are quite high when dealing with case supplied PSU's. The fact that you are only getting a glimmer of life, and it won't turn on at all after that means that the PSU is not completing its circuit. (sounds like a bad capacitor) You need to test the PSU with a multi meter or cut your loses and look for a quality PSU.

[rmerina]

Well, the multimeter is in the toolbox at work and I wont be there until this summer. Looks like I am buying a new PSU tomorrow.

Any reccomendations as far as what kind of capacity I might be looking at?
It is a 500w in there now, so should I buy a TRUE 500 watt PSU or..?

Thanks
Rick

[glc]

You don't need 500 watts, you just need a quality power supply. Before buying ANYTHING, you NEED to follow this procedure:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=132409

If you buy a power supply, it must be ATX 2.0 spec with 24 pin main power and the other required connectors. We don't really care for Raidmax branded power supplies here, but there are a LOT worse. There are some sticky threads in General Hardware you may want to look over. I have a feeling that you have a motherboard mounting issue, not a bum power supply. You may simply not have everything connected properly.