mother board require processor to power up?

T

teh_gr1m

New Member
I'm most likely the most retarded person alive, so I bring a question to the people of higher status, do you need a processor to test if your mother board is working? I'm a first time builder and decided id like to try building just a budget computer for myself, considering the fact that my old computer is old and I wasn't in the mood to pay a extra thousand dollars going with dell or some other brand. The first mother board I obtained wasn't receiving any power, so I tested it with my older mother board and it gave power to it, noted by the power supplys fans turning on and it glowing like a beast ^.-, keep in mind this is all gutted except the processor. So, I began to fall into a deeper depression thinking that my mother board was DOA, so I bought another motherboard, still, no signs of receiving power.

So i'm clueless really, if its some simple moronic cord I fail to see, or the processor is DOA, honestly I dont know, so hopefully any of you can lead me in the right direction, considering the fact my parents went in on it to for my christmas/birthday present, getting yelled at and not having a working computer for the past few weeks is kinda a bitch aye -.^;!


edit: Quick sidenote, one time when i was tampering with it trying to get it to work with my newest mother board, with the power still on I put in my 24 pin power coard into the right slot, and it did a split second flicker of light from my power supplys lights and my fans lights and then it just shut right back off again.

Pics:

Only power supply connected to my dell mobo, all working, shown by blue LEDS:
sspx0009xb8.jpg


Power supply connected to my new motherboard, not showing any signs of power, no leds/fans turning on:
sspx0010if7.jpg
 
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Since it doesn't seem like anyone knows if a computer can be tested and shown to be good without a processor or what my problem is, is there any hardware tech support lines that you know of?
 
Well as far as i know when you apply power to it you should get a active led on the board itself. But to fully test the board i would slap a processor in it.
 
Is that a Dell PSU? Some power supplies Dell use aren't the standard pin arrangements for ATX IIRC so you may want to have a look if it is about getting a normal power supply. Also plugging it in while the machine was on probably damaged the board anyway, those VRM's don't like a lot of voltage going through them.
 
PabloTeK said:
Some power supplies Dell use aren't the standard pin arrangements for ATX IIRC so you may want to have a look if it is about getting a normal power supply.
Click to expand...

Not all Dell's used different power supplies. I'm not sure about the newest, but I know for sure some Dells work just fine with a standard ATX. I think it as an Optiplex 240 I tried one on...

As for the original question, you do need a processor and RAM for the motherboard to fully work, though it will usually do something with one or the other. A computer with a CPU and no RAM will usually give long beeps. One with RAM and no processor may do nothing, but I have seen some that power up for a second (no screen or anything of course) then shut off. It really depends on the motherboard...
 
it would probably start beeping at you, it would send out an error code saying, that the cpu in the socket is defective(maybe even that there no cpu there) if it doesn't beep at all, most likely something else is defective(psu or mobo)
 
Most BIOS's will beep if the CPU has borked itself, Award (which is what I guess that board has from past experience) will beep high and low repeatedly with all the fans and bits spinning.
 
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