Do you need a hard drive for your first boot?

[Seannyboy217]

I'm building my first gaming PC. I have basically all of the parts except the hard drive as I'm being dicked around by amazon. I put all the components (bar the HDD) in the pc and then tried to do a first boot, but nothing came up onn my screen. Is this because I don't have a hard drive installed yet? or is it something to do with my GPU? (A GTX 960 btw)

 

[McHenryB]

No, you don't need a hard drive (although obviously you are going to need one to install stuff on!) You should get the boot-up screens, be able to get into the BIOS and boot from a DVD or USB stick. Something else is wrong. Does the m/b have on-board graphics that you can test? Have you plugged in power connectors for the graphics card? Do the fans spin and any leds on the m/b come on? Are you sure that you have used the correct stand-offs and the correct number of them - otherwise you may be shorting something to the chassis.

You really should do a test of everything before you put it in the case, just to check that it is working. You can just sit the m/b on a bit of cardboard for this.

 

[Seannyboy217]

No, you don't need a hard drive (although obviously you are going to need one to install stuff on!) You should get the boot-up screens, be able to get into the BIOS and boot from a DVD or USB stick. Something else is wrong. Does the m/b have on-board graphics that you can test? Have you plugged in power connectors for the graphics card? Do the fans spin and any leds on the m/b come on? Are you sure that you have used the correct stand-offs and the correct number of them - otherwise you may be shorting something to the chassis.

You really should do a test of everything before you put it in the case, just to check that it is working. You can just sit the m/b on a bit of cardboard for this.

I checked; all of my fans are spinning, including that of my heat sync and gpu so their powered. However the power connector provided with my GPU doesn't fit for some reason and so i've had to use a 6+2 pin connector instead of 8 pin. Could this be causing issues? Also standoffs pre installed so that shouldn't be the issue

 

[McHenryB]

The 6+2 should work just as well as an 8. I take it the card only has the one 8-pin socket, not an additional 6- or 8-pin one? Do you have any old graphic cards you can try (or can a mate lend you one)? That would help to narrow down the fault. It's not unknown for a GPU to be dead on arrival, but it would help if you could establish that the fault lay there.

Have you checked that all other power connectors are firmly plugged in. You haven't forgotten the 4 (or 8) pin plug for the CPU? Are you sure your m/b supports the CPU you are using?

It might help if you listed the make and model of all components - m/b, cpu, gpu, psu.

 

[Seannyboy217]

The 6+2 should work just as well as an 8. I take it the card only has the one 8-pin socket, not an additional 6- or 8-pin one? Do you have any old graphic cards you can try (or can a mate lend you one)? That would help to narrow down the fault. It's not unknown for a GPU to be dead on arrival, but it would help if you could establish that the fault lay there.

Have you checked that all other power connectors are firmly plugged in. You haven't forgotten the 4 (or 8) pin plug for the CPU? Are you sure your m/b supports the CPU you are using?

It might help if you listed the make and model of all components - m/b, cpu, gpu, psu.

Just went through and disconnected then reconnected all of my connectors; didn't help. I'm using a GTX 960, and AMD Athlon x4 860k, a Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H motherboard and a Corsair CXM 600 watt psu

 

[misteriosly]

Do you have speaker ? Does your speaker beeps ? If not, start adding components one by one.
If you have a speaker you can identify this faster.
Lets assume you have speaker:
Remove everything, ram, gpu, additional hardware. Keep it to bare minimum.
Your PC usually can run with only mobo,CPU and a stick of ram.
Without ram it should beep alot in intervals.

BUT If you dont have speaker, try removing everything and only plug in 1 ram (ofcourse dont remove cpu).
If you dont boot even then, you face a problem with one of the following components:
-cpu
-motherboard
-ram
-psu
If you have more than one sticks of ram, try em.
What happens when you try to boot ? Nothing or MB lights flashes or what ?

 

[Seannyboy217]

Do you have speaker ? Does your speaker beeps ? If not, start adding components one by one.
If you have a speaker you can identify this faster.
Lets assume you have speaker:
Remove everything, ram, gpu, additional hardware. Keep it to bare minimum.
Your PC usually can run with only mobo,CPU and a stick of ram.
Without ram it should beep alot in intervals.

BUT If you dont have speaker, try removing everything and only plug in 1 ram (ofcourse dont remove cpu).
If you dont boot even then, you face a problem with one of the following components:
-cpu
-motherboard
-ram
-psu
If you have more than one sticks of ram, try em.
What happens when you try to boot ? Nothing or MB lights flashes or what ?

Ok I took everything out and then put my MB, cpu, ram, psu and gpu in and now I'm getting the bios screen. The only thing that's been left out besides connecting front panel connectors is the wifi card and the disk drive.

 

[misteriosly]

By disk drive you mean external disk or some sata(internal) disk ?
Just add thing by thing, but what i think your problem could be from front pannel connectors.
You added 1 stick of ram or 2 ?

 

[Seannyboy217]

By disk drive you mean external disk or some sata(internal) disk ?
Just add thing by thing, but what i think your problem could be from front pannel connectors.
You added 1 stick of ram or 2 ?

Two RAM sticks and SATA drive, however now i face an entirely new problem. I turned to machine off, connected the sata and went to turn it back on but when i connected the hdmi i got a shock. Now the system wont even turn on. Im really worried I've completely destroyed it

 

[dominirican3351]

might be that the bios on mobo is old what version bios is it on? The latest is F8. If its not on f8, preform the bios update and then try installing the card

 

[Seannyboy217]

might be that the bios on mobo is old what version bios is it on? The latest is F8. If its not on f8, preform the bios update and then try installing the card

Now it wont turn on at all though

 

[dominirican3351]

pull out the cmos battery let it sit for 30 secs and re put it in

 

[Seannyboy217]

pull out the cmos battery let it sit for 30 secs and re put it in

That didn't work, I'm afraid it might be my PSU