Motherboard & CPU upgrade woes

Most of todays Motherboards will not even boot up without the CPU or Memory installed.

If the CPU is good, but Memory bad you will get beeps. If CPU bad, you will get nothing at all, even though the power is on.
 
The only thing that concerns the end user is, "DOES IT WORK?!"

There is no need to perform anything more than the most rudimentary diagnostics, and the danger of performing anything extra (slipping with the screwdriver for example) outweighs any benefit. The diagnostics you need to do are limited to

1) Is everything plugged in correctly?
2) Are any diagnostic lights flashing?
3) Is everything that you plugged into it undamaged?

Anything to do with leaky capacitors, underrated resistors, vinegar on the microchips :wink: is down to manufacturing defects. Let the manufacturer worry about those.

Try disassembling the whole thing, and rebuilding it one component at a time... So if you try motherboard + CPU + RAM + Graphics card, with nothing else, and that works, you know that it is a problem elsewhere (or with e.g. the HD controller on your mobo). Eitherway you know it isn't the CPU then, for example. So try adding the harddrives, then the DVD drive, then the network card. When it stops working you know that last bit is part of the problem.

Sometimes PCs do this when you build them, it is likely that everything is OK, just there is one pin somewhere that isn't making good contact. So by reassembling it all you may solve the problem without ever knowing where it was.
 
Porker said:
How would you know if a capacitor was leaky? This doesn't normally mean that they leak anything visible.
Click to expand...

See <a href=http://www.overclockers.com/tips00140/>here</a>

that is what a capacitor looks like when it leaks. I didn't mean leaking current. The main problem occurec around 2002 but some motherboard manufacturers are still using stocks of this old faulty capacitor type.
 
I was only referring to one particular type of capacitor problem that mainly affected 6.3v and 10v 1500uf caps. This was down to the fact that the electrolyte was manufactured incorrectly causing it to leak out of the caps leaving visible gloop. In most cases this didn't happen until boards were run for a while but in some cases boards out of the box had this problem. The staining isn't always visible but it is a possibility.

Another important thing to check with the motherboard etc out of the case is that the agp card is fully seated in its slot. Again cheap cases can cause the agp card not to seat fully.

He really needs to find what is at fault so he can send the right part back to the manufacturer without them turning around and slapping a return fee on it because items not faulty.

Hd controller failure doesn't normally prevent POST from completing or display initialisation problems

Apologies I did mean to say attach the cpu, heatsink and agp card for first test. It is also worthwhile connecting speaker to see what POST beep codes you get. Also dont forget to use an antistatic grounding strap when handling computer components.

If you can tell us whether you get any POST beeps and what type they are that might help to find a solution.
 
my pc only beeps through its internal peizo, so i presume you mean this?
 
Aye

Some have internal piezo, some have 1" internal coil speaker. this would be the one that connects to the pin header on the motherboard via the system speaker pins
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top