What's wrong now?

Itronix

New Member
I decided to install a second drive in my computer, one that we had sitting in a computer that we don't use (it was a working drive). So, I installed it, and when I turned the system on, it just beeped and gave me nothing on the screen. I started checking to see if everything was plugged in still, but all seemed ok. So, I looked up the beep code. One fairly long beeeeep every six seconds or so....turns out the code is for bad ram. I tried one stick at a time and swapped them to opposite sockets, but still nothing. I also tried resetting the cmos battery. So, I installed the ram on a different system, and the system wouldn't give me anything on the screen either. So it seems fairly obvious that my ram is shot.

What happened? Is it because I have a cheapo motherboard, or because of the cheapo psu, or both? It's my first build and I was on a fairly tight budget so I did what I could, but next time I'm going Asus, or Dfi, or Gigabyte with an Antec supply.

I want to go with at least a tri core next time, so if the ram is really blown, I'll just have a dead system until I can rebuild after I get a job so I can purchase at least 1066 with the new processor, board, and psu of coarse.
 
So maybe I could get away with just doing the ram? I mean at least for now. I want to build again, but not right now.
 
try borrowing some ram from another pc, or someone you know to make sure this is the problem before buying new ram.
 
I actually have a system with that ram here, I just want to know if it could blow too? I've removed that other hard drive completely.
 
i don't think so, unless the ram slots are shot (this happened to me, fried a good 1gb stick of ram in my old mobo)
 
Ok so I tried some different ram, but didn't see any improvement. So, not sure what else to try, I pulled the psu out and tried it in another computer. The other computer fired right up and all was well. I reinstalled it, using this as a chance to rearrange some of the wires. I went and hit the power and to my amazement it fired right up. It said there had been a change to the cmos i think and it booted a bit slow, but fine. I had to re adjust the time and date.

It was fine for at least a day, till I walked in on a black screen and racing fans. I shut it off, turned it back on, and I got a black screen, loud fans, but no beeps. So, I decided to start unplugging connections, because that fixed it before. Unplugged the gpu and plugged it back in....no difference. Connected the monitor to the onboard video...no difference. Disconnected and reconnected the 4 pin connector....no difference. Unplugged the 24 pin connector and then plugged it back in....now we're back to the beeping.

To me that's a dead giveaway of an issue either at the 24 pin connector, or in the surrounding area. The ram is close to it, so maybe there's a problem with the board there, I don't know. I am sure that the motherboard must be shorting or losing connection in that general area now, so I'm going to replace it. The power supply connector looks just fine. Does anyone have any opinions? I want to replace this board with something newer and of higher quality (Gigabyte, Asus, or DFI capable of AM3) anyway, but I really want to replace everything lol, so I want to replace whats actually bad first so I have a working computer while I'm upgrading, as I can't afford to just rebuild right now.
 
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