After spending a few hours trying to figure out why my friends computer wont boot, I have finally admitted to being a failure and now turn to ask you lovely people if you may know anything. The components are an Abit "Fatal1ty" AN8 SLi, an AMD 4400 X2, 2x 1GB DDR400, 500w power supply (came with the case unfortunately) and an Sapphire X1800XT. Everything is plugged in and correct, as far as I know (I built it, and I'm fairly confident with my l33t skills). Anyway, the problem is that it doesn't boot. It merely sits makes a sort of buzzing noise for about a second and then sits with the .8.3 on the post code indicator. I've tried taking out all but the bare essentials and still nothing. The SLi is set to "Normal" (I don't know why he has an SLi before you ask) and all the power connectors are plugged in. If any of you know what the problem could be, then we would be most grateful. Thank you.
Do you have another PSU ytou can try in it? That's a pretty beefy system, and... whilst you'd get away with a lower power branded/quality PSU... a 500w generic one coulf be struggling to have enough oomph? The only other siuggestion I have is to strip the system down to the bare essentials... fit one component at a time, and try booting up after each fitting?
The buzzing noise points to the PSU for me - try unplugging it from everything and shorting the green wire to a black one on the main ATX plug. If it still buzzes, you're in business as a PSU is easy to replace. If it doesn't, the problem is likely somewhere in the motherboard. Try resetting the CMOS as said above. Even if the problem doesn't turn out to be the power supply, I would highly recommend replacing it with a quality unit from a name-brand manufacturer. You'll need 450-480W to power that with some headroom - that generic POS that came with the case is not going to do it any favours and will likely conk out very soon under that sort of stress. Good brand names include Tagan, Enermax, PC Power and Cooling, Zippy, Fortron, Seasonic and Hiper.
Yeah, tried all of that. Cleared the CMOS and everything I can think of. 83 in the manual points to "ATX power supply ready", which leads me further to believe it is the PSU at fault. I've done the whole process of taking things out and leaving in the bare essentials just to see if it will boot, just the cpu, 1 Ram Dimm and Graphics card, even tried without the Graphics card. And still nothing. haha, out of 6 years building computers, something always surprises you. I'm thinking it could be the PSU, or it might even be the motherboard that is wrong. I've got an Enermax 460w in my rig, so I might try that. Thanks for the help though!
Sometimes hardware can just be picky too. It may be that the PSU that came with the case would work just fine with all of that hardware on an ASUS board...or a gigabyte board. I really doubt it....since generic PSUs are generally utter crap. But I did a build for a friend once on a crappy Biostar motherboard that had problems with any Antec PSU you plugged into it. But it worked fine with an Enermax. Both of which I consider to be decent PSUs. *shrug*
You soo need to buy a new PSU, gerenic PSU's are complete sh!t. I personally prefer Tagan but its up to you.
