PC wont power up

[Wabisuke]

I ordered all the parts for my pc (ASUS M2N SLI motherboard AM2 socket, G.SKILL 2 1gig ram, AMD 64 X2 AM2 socket, Thermaltake TR2- 430W, GeForce 8600 GTS OC) and put it all together but when i press the power switch, the fans turn on for a second then shut off. I dont hear any sound at all (previous comp makes noise when starting up..guess those are the fans...) I asked my cousin, and he said maybe the motherboard is shorting. i brought it over and he tok the board out and put it back in and said it should be fine but wen we started it up, same problem. Can someone please help me? I dont want the money i spent to go to waste and i want to get away from this crap computer im using to write this..lol

Oh yea i tried what Hal said and i dont even get a message on my monitor....

[Kov-Ice]

I'd start with HAL's Guide to Troubleshooting a New Build. From there, you can try to pinpoint the troublespot.

[Wabisuke]

I tried using a different power supply and ram but i got the same results. The computer doesnt have enough time to even start up...and from what i was told, if I keep pressing the power button, i can fry my motherboard/cpu or something..

[Kov-Ice]

Have you taken everything out of the case? Just connect the bare essentials and see if it will POST.

[Wabisuke]

Yes, i took the motherboard out, placed it on the box it came with, popped in one ram, video card, plugged in the power(24pin plus the 4pin) to the motherboard and the video card, and then tried the power up with the screw driver and i got the same result.

Im guessing it has something to do with my cpu and heatsink/fan, so if i cant figure this out in a day or so im gonna get replacements from newegg.

[Katreat]

You should try the other stick of ram just to make sure you dont have one bad stick, at least that will get rid of one more possibility.

[Wabisuke]

kk

[Cricket]

Make sure the CPU heatsink is installed properly. If it's not making good contact with the CPU heatspreader the CPU will overheat very quickly and the system will shutdown.

Cricket

[Wabisuke]

hey cricket, i think i installed it correctly. my socket is an AM2, i dont know if its different, but i matched the corner with the little triangle on it(CPU) to the corner with the triangle on it on the motherboard and latched it on. then i placed my fan for the cpu and clamped it down. i showed it to my cousin and he said it was installed fine. But ill still retry putting the cpu and fan in place..

i tried my new power supply on this computer im suing atm and it works, so thats one out of the way. i then tried the video card and ram on my bro's comp and they are good. so im guessing its gotta be my motherboard or cpu. i hope thats enough info... ill most likely get a replacement from newegg for either the cpu or motherboard or both.

[wjperry]

Did you use either thermal paste or pad between the CPU and heatsink? That could be the problem as Cricket was describing!

[Wabisuke]

WOOOOT! it works! lol...the thermal paste the stock fan came with was crap...i removed it and applied some of the paste my zalman came with and yay it works..ty for the help guys *cough* cricket.

Baaahhhhh... now im having trouble with setting the pc up. This is what my screen says(black and white..im gessin thats DOS)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to ASUS Motherboard Make Disk for DOS Menu
1) Nvidia Raid Driver Page
2) Jmicron JM 363 RAID Driver Disk
3) Free DOS command prompt
Choose 1~3
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, I looked in the motherboard manual and it said to format the floppy in DOS mode so i pressed '3' and did the format A:/S + ENTER, and that formatted the disk. I went back to the main menu and pressed '1' and saved whatever it had in that section onto the disk. But instead of moving on, it keeps going back to the main page over and over again... Im pretty sure you can do something about this in DOS mode.