New Build - Nothing Displayed On Screen

Malice

I am just putting together a new PC build and have run into a problem which probably has an easy answer. Hopefully someone here can help. Basically I've put everything together but when I hit the power button, the button lights up, the case fan turns on and I can open and close the DVD drive tray but nothing else happens. I don't get anything happening on the screen. I thought it might have been a conflict between the on-board graphics card and the separate one that I installed but attaching the monitor to either output doesn't give me anything on the screen.

Any ideas? Am I missing something fundamental?

Monotype

Try a different monitor? Or a different cable.

briany

Malice wrote: »

I am just putting together a new PC build and have run into a problem which probably has an easy answer. Hopefully someone here can help. Basically I've put everything together but when I hit the power button, the button lights up, the case fan turns on and I can open and close the DVD drive tray but nothing else happens. I don't get anything happening on the screen. I thought it might have been a conflict between the on-board graphics card and the separate one that I installed but attaching the monitor to either output doesn't give me anything on the screen.

Any ideas? Am I missing something fundamental?

If you have a motherboard speaker plugged into the speaker header, you should be able to hear a coded beep that you could refer to in the MoBo manual or online to get an exact nature of the hardware issue. If, on the off chance, you're using a VGA-DVI type setup, the kind that many GFX come with an adapter for, it's definitely worth double checking connections and securing them tightly. Another good idea if none of that's any good, though a bit of a hassle, would be to dismantle your build and do a test boot with the motherboard sitting on a non-conductive surface (the cardboard boxes they come in are good for it), connecting the only the basic components (power, RAM, CPU, no GFX card), connect to the onboard video output and see if it works from there.

Malice

Just getting back to this. Thanks for the suggestions so far.

Monotype wrote: »

Try a different monitor? Or a different cable.

Yep, have tried 2 different monitors and 2 different power cables, all of which worked as expected with a different PC.

briany wrote: »

If you have a motherboard speaker plugged into the speaker header, you should be able to hear a coded beep that you could refer to in the MoBo manual or online to get an exact nature of the hardware issue.

I've had a look and while the motherboard has a jumper for a speaker, it doesn't seem like the case supports it . At least, there isn't a cable coming from the front of the case that will fit. If it helps, the case is the Silver Arrow version of this and the motherboard is this.

briany wrote:

If, on the off chance, you're using a VGA-DVI type setup, the kind that many GFX come with an adapter for, it's definitely worth double checking connections and securing them tightly.

Yep, I have tried with and without the adapter.

briany wrote:

Another good idea if none of that's any good, though a bit of a hassle, would be to dismantle your build and do a test boot with the motherboard sitting on a non-conductive surface (the cardboard boxes they come in are good for it), connecting the only the basic components (power, RAM, CPU, no GFX card), connect to the onboard video output and see if it works from there.

I think I may have to do this as I'm a bit out of ideas. I also tried re-seating the ATX connector from the power supply to the motherboard with no joy.

Just one addition to my first post, the processor fan spins in addition to the case fan. It gets its power from the motherboard so that's a good sign in terms of the board not being as dead as a dodo right? (I'm just hoping the board is okay ).

Tij da feen

Do you have the CPU power lead from the PSU plugged in at the top of the motherboard?

briany

Malice wrote: »

Just one addition to my first post, the processor fan spins in addition to the case fan. It gets its power from the motherboard so that's a good sign in terms of the board not being as dead as a dodo right? (I'm just hoping the board is okay ).

It would be hard to tell if the motherboard is a dud or not despite the power getting through but then I can't say how likely it is that neither the GFX card or onboard work. Would be a highly unfortunate coincidence. In my opinion, it points to some sort of iffy connection and would be worth trying Tij da feen's suggestion of re-checking the CPU power connector, making sure that's in good and proper. Might in fact be worth reseating everything to be honest, just to rule out a bad connection. That includes the CPU unless you're confident you dropped it by the book first time 'round (don't think most, especially new builders would be too jazzed about having to go back and fiddle with the potentially most delicate bit of the system though. :P )

Anyway, before you do anything it might be worth hanging on to see if anybody more experienced of these issues has anything to say. In the meantime, you may have already seen this but it's worth posting anyway. It's part II of Newegg's guide to building a PC, including the test boot method before mounting inside the case. Found it really really helpful personally speaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_56kyib-Ls

Monotype

Might be worth taking out your graphics card and seeing if the onboard video works when it's by itself. As someone said above, do double check that you have that 4/8 pin connector connected to the board.

msg11

Any update?

I'll throw in my two cents, I recalled having a similar problem before and it was down to the PSU that time it was a connection to the board that was not plugged in, so the board was not getting the correct power supply.

The second time I heard of this, was not on one of my builds put the actual PSU was not powerful enough to power the computer up.

One other time recall I had was the jumpers on the board where not in the correct array so to speak.

Malice

Tij da feen wrote: »

Do you have the CPU power lead from the PSU plugged in at the top of the motherboard?

Yep, there are two power connectors, an ATX 12v at the top (8 pins split into 2 groups of 4) and an ATX power connector at the side (24 pins split into 2 groups of 20 and 4). I have tried connecting both and connecting each individually to no avail.

briany wrote: »

Might in fact be worth reseating everything to be honest, just to rule out a bad connection. That includes the CPU unless you're confident you dropped it by the book first time 'round (don't think most, especially new builders would be too jazzed about having to go back and fiddle with the potentially most delicate bit of the system though. :P )

I started from scratch again this evening with everything including the processor. There are notches and indicators on the chip itself so I'm 100% certain I've got the processor in correctly. The one thing I did realise was that the RAM wasn't seated correctly yesterday. The sticks need a bit more force before they snap home.

briany wrote:

It's part II of Newegg's guide to building a PC, including the test boot method before mounting inside the case. Found it really really helpful personally speaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_56kyib-Ls

Thanks, I'll take a look at that .

Monotype wrote: »

Might be worth taking out your graphics card and seeing if the onboard video works when it's by itself. As someone said above, do double check that you have that 4/8 pin connector connected to the board.

I took the graphics card out and left it out this time around. It's gone back into the anti-static packaging until I get some joy with the rest of the system.

msg11 wrote: »

Any update?

I'll throw in my two cents, I recalled having a similar problem before and it was down to the PSU that time it was a connection to the board that was not plugged in, so the board was not getting the correct power supply.

AS far as I can tell, all necessary connections are in and working. When I took the fan off the processor earlier, the thermal paste had melted and both the chip and case fans work when the machine is powered on.

msg11 wrote:

The second time I heard of this, was not on one of my builds put the actual PSU was not powerful enough to power the computer up.

Someone in work suggested that too actually . This is the power supply that I got. It should be fine shouldn't it?

msg11 wrote:

One other time recall I had was the jumpers on the board where not in the correct array so to speak.

Could you elaborate on this? I managed to get the power button cable connector from the front of the case the wrong way round on the system panel header earlier and so nothing at all happened when I hit the on/off switch. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

I also tried resetting the BIOS via jumpers but that didn't seem to help. I'm going to try to get a hold of a speaker connector tomorrow to see if there are any beeps coming from the motherboard.

Monotype

450W is plenty for most systems, but what's it powering?

Jumpers that msg11 is referring to is most like that of older motherboards which had more jumpers to set. Nowadays, the only thing like that that you see is the BIOS reset one.

Is the RAM in the right slots as it says to put them into in the manual?

I'd say try one stick at a time. One of them might be faulty.

msg11

As said 450 should be plenty to power it. The jumpers thing is just to get it into different modes, but it's been years since I have seen them on a board.

By the sounds of it, something is not working with the board is the RAM/CPU compilable with the board etc.. ?

Malice

Monotype wrote: »

450W is plenty for most systems, but what's it powering?

At this moment in time it's just powering the motherboard and the RAM. Everything else is disconnected.

Monotype wrote:

Is the RAM in the right slots as it says to put them into in the manual?
I'd say try one stick at a time. One of them might be faulty.

The motherboard manual is here. According to the manual it supports DDR3 RAM which is what I bought - 4 of these.

msg11 wrote: »

is the RAM/CPU compilable with the board etc.. ?

As far as I can tell from the motherboard page it supports Core i7 processors which is the one I got.

As for the RAM, the motherboard page states that it supports DDR3. Shouldn't that be okay? I'm a bit confused because the ASRock Memory Support List doesn't list the specific make and model of RAM that I have.

The CPU Support List does list the processor.

Tij da feen

Ahh there's your problem. You have a Z68 motherboard. The motherboard's BIOS needs to be updated with a Sandy Bridge processor in it before it will recognise an Ivy Bridge processor which is what you have.

Malice

Tij da feen wrote: »

Ahh there's your problem. You have a Z68 motherboard. The motherboard's BIOS needs to be updated with a Sandy Bridge processor in it before it will recognise an Ivy Bridge processor which is what you have.

I'm sure it's probably pretty obvious but how did you figure that out? More importantly I suppose is how do I update the BIOS?

Edit: It may not matter at this point but I managed to get a motherboard speaker and attach it to the board. When I turn on the system I get four short beeps. Unfortunately I can't conclusively establish what those beeps represent. So far I've found this which suggests bad RAM and this which suggests a "System Timer Failure".

Monotype

You'd need to borrow somebody's CPU to update the BIOS. You can see on the CPU support list that says for each CPU that it's supported since BIOS version X. Sometimes there's clues as to which BIOS version you have on the motherboard or by revision number markings.

I'd still try the RAM one module at a time. It doesn't matter whether it's compatible or not; you can still have one broken module stopping an entire system from booting.

Malice

Some progress at last! The BIOS is now updated. Massive thanks are due to the ever so helpful fellow Boardsie Sniipe who lent me his compatible processor and then took the time to hold my hand (metaphorically speaking) during the update operation. With my processor in there now I can boot to the BIOS screen. When I get home later I will attempt the rest of the setup.

Interestingly, the four beeps I described yesterday stopped once I put all the RAM back in.

Sniipe

Malice wrote: »

Massive thanks are due to the ever so helpful fellow Boardsie Sniipe who lent me his compatible processor and then took the time to hold my hand (metaphorically speaking) during the update operation.

We got it working!!!