New build - Green Light on Mobo but no boot up

[ritchie]

Hi all, after much lurking on this site, I was encouraged by your helpfulness to have a go at building a rig using some parts from OcUK. Have replaced H/Ds, sound graphics, and CPUs before, but first time full build.

Specs:

Lian-li V-1000
Asus A8N-SLi Premium
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200 2.2Ghz
Zalman 7000B-CU Copper LED (CPU Fan)
OCZ Platinum EL Dual Channel 2x512 PC3200
Western Digital Raptor 36g
Gainward BLISS GeForce 7800 GT "Goes Like Hell" 512MB
Asus DRW-1608P2S 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter
Tagan TG480-U22 480W ATX2.01 2Force SLi Compliant PSU (includes a grounding wire to the chasis)
Logitech G5 Mouse
MS Media Keyboard Elite
Belinea 10 20 35w

As described on other threads, I have the green light on mobo, nothing else.

All installed as per guides on this site, Corsair System Build guide and the user manuals.

Plugged PSU cable into wall, into the PSU (PSU is set to combine as default), switched on, pressed the on/off switch on case, small puff of smoke from PSU, panicked, switched the PSU off and unplugged. (Have read PSU's sometimes do this on first boot unless it was major smoke or sparks, possibly not a terminal problem.)

Checked over everything for shorts, switched on again, chassis fans, CPU fan/led on for a micro second, then nothing. Green light on mobo as others describe. Note: the Lian Li comes shipped with chrome mobo stand offs - I assume these are ok to use?

Shorted the on/off pins on the mobo panel in case it is the switch, no go.
Pulled the cards, drive, reseated the CPU, tried it without the heatsink, reseated the RAM, tried it without the RAM still nothing except the green standby light on mobo.

No obvious issues with the build process. Was careful with everything discharged static, didn't touch any board surface, nothing was forced, used Arctic Silver 5 on the CPU heatsink.

A work colleague has offered to lend me a PSU, but I don't want to fry that also (if there was something I did wrong in the build).

A few questions:

1) When I get the spare PSU, should I remove the mobo, plug everything in and test it on a wooden bench?

2) If it does not fire up, reading from other threads, it's most likely the mobo right? Is there anything I can obviously check, or should I just RMA it?

3) I really don't have the patience to send parts back one by one, can anyone recommend an honest and competent mobile PC repair guy in Surrey? I know I'll stuff something else up and would rather just get someone to fix it.

I just want to play HL2 dammit

 

[Dutch Guy]

1) When I get the spare PSU, should I remove the mobo, plug everything in and test it on a wooden bench?

2) If it does not fire up, reading from other threads, it's most likely the mobo right? Is there anything I can obviously check, or should I just RMA it?

3) I really don't have the patience to send parts back one by one, can anyone recommend an honest and competent mobile PC repair guy in Surrey? I know I'll stuff something else up and would rather just get someone to fix it.

1) Just use the other PSU as normal, most likely your PSU has died or at least a fuse if there is one.
2) Most likely the mobo, but in that case I think your mobo and PSU are dead
3) No idea, take it one step at a time and try the other PSU first.

When my PSU died ath light on the mobo came on, when I pressed the on button the fans would move one millimeter and then do nothing anymore, getting a new PSU solved it.

 

[stvmor]

"Puff of smoke" symptoms are almost always indicative of failure/imminent failure of that part. Try your mates PSU, most modern PSU's have overload protection so shouldn't damage it.
Post back here when you have tried another PSU.
P.S. Even top quality PSU's can fail, especially on 1st use

 

[ns400r]

Plugged PSU cable into wall, into the PSU (PSU is set to combine as default), switched on, pressed the on/off switch on case, small puff of smoke from PSU, panicked, switched the PSU off and unplugged. (Have read PSU's sometimes do this on first boot unless it was major smoke or sparks, possibly not a terminal problem.)

Don't think twice about it, get a new PSU. Like was previously mentioned, once your free the smoke you'll never get it back in again and the component will most likely be toast.

 

[ritchie]

Just wanted to close this saga and say thanks for the support. Work collegue didn't come through with the promised PSU so RMA'd the suspect unit direct with TAGAN distributer, two days later, another arrived, but it was the wrong model.....few days later another box turned up, the correct one - yipeeeee.

So, pulled MOBO out and sat it on a box on top of the anti-static sheet, CPU/RAM/GPU only - plugged in power, switch on, short the on/off switch jumbers and a lovely blue led lit up accompanied by the glorious quietness of the Zalman spinning away.

So, fried PSU was the culprit I guess.

Very good feeling to bolt it all back in, install XP, all the latest drivers then HL2 and Far Cry and away I go. Been running a few days now with no problems.

So, thanks very much for your support. Hope this small thread helps somebody else out there with similar problem.

 

[Dutch Guy]

Always nice to find out you swapped the correct part, nothing more annoying than installing a new part only to find the problem still remains.

 

[stvmor]

So, fried PSU was the culprit I guess.

Very good feeling to bolt it all back in, install XP, all the latest drivers then HL2 and Far Cry and away I go. Been running a few days now with no problems.

Glad you've got your priorities right