Computer starts up, but no POST, no BIOS, and no Beeps. Please help!

[Il_Duce]

Hello,

I recently built a computer for my cousin. It went together fine but I am having a problem getting it to boot up. When I plug it in and power it up, all the fans will spin (including the CPU fan and the fan on the GPU) but I don't get anything on the monitor. No POST, no BIOS, no logo screen, nothing. After a couple of seconds I hear a series of ticks (sounds like they MIGHT be coming from the processor) and the CPU fan revs down for a second as though I just restarted it and then it revs back up. Rinse and repeat. I have double and triple checked the wiring on the motherboard. I have removed the motherboard battery for >5 minutes to try and reset the BIOS. I have tried removing all the accessories (wireless card, graphics card, etc...). I have tried using both sticks of RAM in each of the two slots. I am not getting anywhere and I don't know where to proceed from here! If you need anymore information, let me know and I will do my best to answer any questions. Please help! Thanks in advance!

Specs:
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P Socket AM3+ 760G mATX AMD Motherboard
Processor - AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition Boxed Processor
RAM - XMS3 8GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) CL9 Desktop Memory Kit (Two 4GB Memory Modules)
PSU - eXtreme Power Plus 500 Watt ATX 12V Power Suppl
GPU - XFX HD-677X-ZNFC AMD Radeon HD 6770 1024MB DDR5 PCIe 2.1 x16 Video Card
HDD - Caviar WD5000ABYS 500GB RE2 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s 7,200RPM Internal Desktop Hard Drive
DvD Drive - Samsung 22X DVD±RW Burner with Dual Layer Support - OEM
Wireless Card - Tenda 300Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter

 

[nikimarie]

I would guess you are starving for power if all other connections are correct and the monitor is good. That particular card has a "Minimum" 500 Watt power supply requirement. Are you required to power this card with a 6 pin separate power cable from your power supply? Try a larger Power supply to test theory out, or better yet, much easier, throw in a cheaper, "Known to be Good" video card with a much lower power consumption and see what happens.....Niki By the way, be sure you have the power connector pluged into the CPU or no video, no nothing will happen!

 

[bryonhowley]

As nikimarie said make sure the 6 pin PCI-E power cable is plugged into the video card and the +12 4 pin cpu power cable is plugged in as well as the 24 pin power. PSU should be enough but that does not mean you could not be overloading one of your rails. You have two rails but only 18a on each however no more than you are running you should be ok with that psu.

Have you checked to make sure that the mainboard standoffs(the little standoffs that the mainboard screws into that keeps the mainboard elevated off the mainboard tray) only correspond to screw mounts on the mainboard.

 

[jankyscoes]

The ticks you hear could possibly be the motherboard shorting out on the case. Remove the motherboard from the case and try to power up. Make sure to place the motherboard on a non-conductive surface, I like to use the anti-static bags they are shipped in.

 

[jsc]

A 6770 only pulls about 20 watts during boot to a 2D desktop.

Onthe other hand, your power supply is one step above junk.

Work systematically through our standard checklist and troubleshooting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-read-posting-boot-problems
I mean work through, not just read over it. We spent a lot of time on this. It should find most of the problems.

If no luck, continue.

The following is an expansion of my troubleshooting tips in the breadboarding link in the "Cannot boot" thread.

I have tested the following beep patterns on Gigabyte, eVGA, and ECS motherboards. Other BIOS' may be different, but they all use a single short beep for a successful POST.

Breadboard - that will help isolate any kind of case problem you might have.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/262730-31-breadboarding

Breadboard with just motherboard, CPU & HSF, case speaker, and PSU.

Make sure you plug the CPU power cable in. The system will not boot without it.

I always breadboard a new build. It takes only a few minutes, and you know you are putting good parts in the case once you are finished.

You can turn on the PC by momentarily shorting the two pins that the case power switch goes to. You should hear a series of long, single beeps indicating memory problems. Silence indicates a problem with (in most likely order) the PSU, motherboard, or CPU. Remember, at this time, you do not have a graphics card installed so the load on your PSU will be reduced.

If no beeps:
Running fans and drives and motherboard LED's do not necessarily indicate a good PSU. In the absence of a single short beep, they also do not indicate that the system is booting.

At this point, you can sort of check the PSU. Try to borrow a known good PSU of around 550 - 600 watts. That will power just about any system with a single GPU. If you cannot do that, use a DMM to measure the voltages. Measure between the colored wires and either chassis ground or the black wires. Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire (standby power supply): 5 volts always on. The green wire should also have 5 volts on it. It should go to 0 volts when you press the case power button (this is also a good way to test the power switch and the associated wiring), then back to 5 volts when you release the case power switch. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.

You can turn on the PSU by completely disconnecting the PSU and using a paperclip or jumper wire to short the green wire to one of the neighboring black wires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4&feature=youtube_gdata

A way that might be easier is to use the main power plug. Working from the back of the plug where the wires come out, use a bare paperclip to short between the green wire and one of the neighboring black wires. That will do the same thing with an installed PSU. It is also an easy way to bypass a questionable case power switch.

This checks the PSU under no load conditions, so it is not completely reliable. But if it can not pass this, it is dead. Then repeat the checks with the PSU plugged into the computer to put a load on the PSU.

If the system beeps:
If it looks like the PSU is good, install a memory stick. Boot. Beep pattern should change to one long and several short beeps indicating a missing graphics card.

Silence, long single beeps, or series of short beeps indicate a problem with the memory. If you get short beeps verify that the memory is in the appropriate motherboard slots.

Insert the video card and connect any necessary PCIe power connectors. Boot. At this point, the system should POST successfully (a single short beep). Notice that you do not need keyboard, mouse, monitor, or drives to successfully POST.
At this point, if the system doesn't work, it's either the video card or an inadequate PSU. Or rarely - the motherboard's PCIe interface.

Now start connecting the rest of the devices starting with the monitor, then keyboard and mouse, then the rest of the devices, testing after each step. It's possible that you can pass the POST with a defective video card. The POST routines can only check the video interface. It cannot check the internal parts of the video card.

 

[underdog01]

Il_Duce,

Imo with the popping noises from the cpu perhaps it is overheating. Remove the cpu fan & heat sink. Clean the surfaces with alcohol, apply some thermal gel and put it all back together. Ensure the fan & immediate area are clean of all dust.

 

[ggajako]

Hello,

I recently built a computer for my cousin. It went together fine but I am having a problem getting it to boot up. When I plug it in and power it up, all the fans will spin (including the CPU fan and the fan on the GPU) but I don't get anything on the monitor. No POST, no BIOS, no logo screen, nothing. After a couple of seconds I hear a series of ticks (sounds like they MIGHT be coming from the processor) and the CPU fan revs down for a second as though I just restarted it and then it revs back up. Rinse and repeat. I have double and triple checked the wiring on the motherboard. I have removed the motherboard battery for >5 minutes to try and reset the BIOS. I have tried removing all the accessories (wireless card, graphics card, etc...). I have tried using both sticks of RAM in each of the two slots. I am not getting anywhere and I don't know where to proceed from here! If you need anymore information, let me know and I will do my best to answer any questions. Please help! Thanks in advance!

Specs:
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P Socket AM3+ 760G mATX AMD Motherboard
Processor - AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition Boxed Processor
RAM - XMS3 8GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) CL9 Desktop Memory Kit (Two 4GB Memory Modules)
PSU - eXtreme Power Plus 500 Watt ATX 12V Power Suppl
GPU - XFX HD-677X-ZNFC AMD Radeon HD 6770 1024MB DDR5 PCIe 2.1 x16 Video Card
HDD - Caviar WD5000ABYS 500GB RE2 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s 7,200RPM Internal Desktop Hard Drive
DvD Drive - Samsung 22X DVD±RW Burner with Dual Layer Support - OEM
Wireless Card - Tenda 300Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter

Hey I'm having the EXACT same problem with my build. And by exact I mean "When I plug it in and power it up, all the fans will spin (including the CPU fan and the fan on the GPU) but I don't get anything on the monitor. No POST, no BIOS, no logo screen, nothing. After a couple of seconds I hear a series of ticks (sounds like they MIGHT be coming from the processor) and the CPU fan revs down for a second as though I just restarted it and then it revs back up." except mind doesn't make any clicking sounds.

I was wondering if you ever found the solution.

 

[SkylerW]

Yes, it would be nice to see if the problem was solved. I'm having a similar problem with a PC that I built a year and a half ago. I do not have any clicking sounds though. I just moved into a new house and now my gaming PC powers on as soon as you plug it in but there is no BIOS screen or error beeps. I swapped out the PSU, with no luck and I pulled the RAM and there still aren't any error beeps. I'm hoping that it isn't the motherboard but can't seem to find any answers anywhere online. Like I said, I just moved into a new house so I can't afford to just keep buying parts until the computer starts working again but I have already invested a lot of money in this PC.

 

[RicP]

I've run into a very similar situation. If I take the RAM out the board beeps, put the RAM back in no beep although everything starts up (fan/hdd). No BIOS success beep and no video display from either the dedicated card (an AMD 6670) or from the integrated one (I think an AMD 3000). I don't hear any clicks, and although I haven't replaced the PSU I can almost guarantee it's not that.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1938844/issue-booting-msi-760gm.html

 

[SkylerW]

I tried swapping a new PSU but it didn't fix the problem and I tested the RAM in another computer and they worked. The only things I couldn't test are the GPU and CPU because my girlfriends computer can't handle them. I am thinking that the problem is the motherboard, though. I have one on the way and it should be here today. If it fixes the problem I'll make sure to post here. We are having some bad weather but hopefully the Fedex man will come today.

 

[SkylerW]

Swapped out the motherboard and runs like nothing was ever wrong. Well, except that I had to reactivate Windows 8 but that was just a quick call to Microsoft's automated service. Not a big deal. In my situation, I had no error beeps at all, no BIOS, no windows logo when starting up, though. Hopefully this will help someone out.

 

[Jacob Anders]

Same problem as everyone else.. Fans spin. I dont have my graphics card yet, so my VGA cable is plugged directly into the motherboard

 

[Jacob Anders]

FIXED!!! You need to split your 8 pin connector from the power supply into two 4-pin thigns and put it in the ATX 12volt socket or whatever. Darn corsair for being deceiving

 

[mubnarif123]

Its very Easy first you check your pc model no and second you open google and find drivers and third download and install bios driver and then its automatically showing.

Answer from Mubeen Arif.

 

[Aizat Ashaari]

I have the same problem... I tried to figure out and try almost everything until I give up and want to send to repair... But the. My desktop computer able to on show bios and start windows.. What i do? I unplug my ram and remove the dust and plug in again...

 

[Mel Jenkins]

I built my own gaming computer. It worked fine for 5 years then lately when I boot up I do not get the bios boot up screen and no video going into my monitor. Then a few seconds later the Windows video comes on then it works fine. Then I installed this software to enhance my computer performance. Well that software screwed up everything. I just so happen to have a disk image of my working operating system. The problem is that I could not get into the bios were I need to set up to boot from a Norton Ghost CD since I don't get the bios video. I tried unplugging the power to the computer, resetting the bios, removing the bios battery for 5 minutes, reseading the RAM and the video card. Still had the same problem, can't get the bios video. It just so happen I had an old gaming video card. I removed and replace the gaming video card from my computer with the old gaming video card. Viola!....I get the bios video and the windows video. Bad video card that was dying all along.