Cant get PC to post

wiiija · 20 Oct 2007 at 11:09

Hi all,

I've been out of the PC loop for a fair few years now, been using laptops exclusively.
I recently decided to sort myself a desktop for use as a HTPC mainly.I got myself a Q6600, Abit F-190HD a couple of gigs of ram and a silverstone milo from this forum, ordered myself a HDD and DVD drive etc etc.

Anyway to cut a long story short I cant get it to post, using HDMI straight to my M87 I get no signal, tried VGA and I get nothing also. The LED on the mobo lights up red (standby) and stays that way even when powering up, fans etc all powerup but I get no post whatsoever.
I've also tried different ram, but as it doesnt even get that far as to check I figure it isn't that.

I'm fresh out of ideas, I've never had this problem before, they always posted at least to the bios screen before I hit trouble so this is a new one on me :/

Cheers,
Sean

paradigm · 20 Oct 2007 at 11:11

Tried booting it outside of the case to make sure its not shorting out?

wiiija · 20 Oct 2007 at 11:24

I'll try that next

wiiija · 20 Oct 2007 at 11:48

No joy with that, disconnected everything that was not needed, reseated the cpu/ram etc all makes no difference. Starting to think something might be buggered now which is annoying to say the least (I swapped my PS3 for most of these parts!)

wiiija · 20 Oct 2007 at 14:53

Well, I've made a breakthrough but I'm not happy about it.
It seems I can boot with only 1 x DDR module in, but if I try dual channel I get a long continuous beep (memory problem)...............

decto · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:02

Hi,

When you have 1 module installed check the DDR voltage in the BIOS. Most DDR2 modules require at least 2.1v to operate fully. The default for the specification is 1.8v.

It's worth increasing the voltage to see if that lets you boot in dual channel

AD

MumboJumbo · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:07

Yeah all you gota do is bump the volts up and it should run ok. But its straight that it wont even post on 2gb of undervolted ram. I thought the ram is designed to be able to post on 1.8volts but not boot to windows.

wiiija · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:14

Cheers guys I've upped the voltage etc, I've been experimenting some more, slots 1 and 2 are fine but I cannot even run 1 x stick in slots 3 or 4 so I can only presume those 2 slots are buggered!

MumboJumbo · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:15

Looks like you need to RMA the board then.

wiiija · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:16

Yeh, RMA to the guy I got it from :/

decto · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:30

wiiija said:
Cheers guys I've upped the voltage etc, I've been experimenting some more, slots 1 and 2 are fine but I cannot even run 1 x stick in slots 3 or 4 so I can only presume those 2 slots are buggered!

Hi,

From memory the Dimms on that board should be matched pairs in slots 1 + 3 or 2 + 4 to enable dual channel.

Have you tried in these combinations?

If slots 3 and 4 prevent booting even when a Dimm is installed in the respective slot 1 or 2 then it looks like half the memory controller is faulty.

AD

wiiija · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:34

Hi,

Yes I've tried that, 1+3 and 2+4 but as soon as I put a module into 3 or 4 it just will not work, slots 1 and 2 are fine, even when running a module in each.