New motherboard test outside its case - two questions

[pc-twitchy]

I've built a number of PC's but never tried assembling one outside of its case. Until now.

My main query is this: Is the motherboard earthed through the power supply? Or does it need a separate earth connection?

Second question: I won't be connecting the system panel cables, so which pairs of terminals should be shorted to start the motherboard: 'Power button\Ground'? Or 'Reset\Ground'?

Thanks for reading, guys.

 

[geofelt]

If you have a grounded 3 prong outlet, your psu will be the ground.

To start the motherboard, momentarily short the pwr and gnd pins.

My basic test procedure tests outside the case.
I find it handy to buy a power switch like this for testing.
https://www.ebay.com/p/4in1-PC-Power-Reset-Switch-HDD-Motherboar-LED-Cable-Light-Wire-Kit-for-Computer/631889283?iid=142232821294&chn=ps

 

[Dugimodo]

You don't actually need to ground it, and the PSU should do that for you anyway.

I just sit mine on top of the motherboard box with just the graphics card, CPU, & RAM installed, hook up the power supply, keyboard, mouse, RAM, and if I can get into the BIOS and everything looks good I go ahead and build it.

 

[pc-twitchy]

Thanks guys, you've both been very helpful.

Dugimodo, sorry I can't pick your solution, geofelt was the first responder

 

[pc-twitchy]

Me again. The brand new Asus H370 Plus motherboard now starts up and appears to run normally.
But there's no video output from either the VGA or DVI ports.
The monitor - a Phillips 24" 240B - seems to work ok: it displays a 'Phillips' boot screen but then shows message - 'No video input'
It has VGA, DVI and DP ports, but the mobo has only VGA, DVI and HDMI, so can't try HDMI.

As I said, I've built many PC's for myself and customers over the years, and never had a failure because of careless handling (ESD etc) but I've never tried pre-assembling a system on the bench.

All I can think of is that the board is faulty, but that's another thing that I've never had before. Always a first time, I guess.

Anyone able to comment?

 

[punkncat]

I have run into a similar issue trying to boot BIOS using just DVI. In one case I had to find a monitor from another setup that I could hook the HDMI to...in the other I had to manually swap the input via the monitor menu to the one I had hooked up.

Not to overlook the obvious, I make the assumption that this issue exists without a GPU installed. Do you happen to have a GPU you could use to see if you get a splash?

 

[Dugimodo]

One of my monitors requires a manual selection of the input as well, and can be a bit tricky if you are too slow and it goes to sleep first.

 

[pc-twitchy]

punkncat, thanks for responding.
I have two other old monitors I could try - both VGA, I think.
Re the video outputs, yes, they're just the onboard sockets. I might have a PCIe GFX card in another PC that I can try.
But it seems odd that neither of the onboard ports are outputting a signal.
I'm sure the Phillips monitor is OK. I've just replaced with a slightly better Dell, but it's never given trouble before. If I recall correctly, it normally offers a menu choice of VGA\DVI, but in this case, it's not detecting any signal.

 

[pc-twitchy]

Dugimodo, thanks, just found your post. I've been jumping on the menu buttons very quickly, thinking that I might see choices, but I've tried this a dozen times and I don't think I'm too slow. The monitor is just not detecting any signal.

EDIT: I forgot to say that I haven't connected a mouse or KB. Should it matter?

 

[Dugimodo]

connect a keyboard to be safe, not sure if systems still halt when no keyboard is detected but they might. I always connect one so I wouldn't know.

 

[pc-twitchy]

Still no video response. I connected a USB keyboard and USB mouse. Then connected another VGA (CRT) monitor and didn't see anything on screen.
Next, I inserted a spare PCIe video card into one of the two available mobo slots, but still no response, either on the old CRT or the Phillips 24" 240B LED screen I'd tried first. The Phillips just repeated its message of 'no video input'.

I don't have a hard drive connected. When I tried to boot the PC for the first time, I'd inserted a new 250GB Samsung 970 NVMe M2, but removed it when I saw the first 'no video input' message. I wasn't expecting the drive to seen anyway, but I thought I'd at least get the chance to see the BIOS settings.

I could drop in a spare SATA drive, but it doesn't seem likely that'd affect the mobo's video output. Or would it?

 

[Dugimodo]

Have you got both power connectors connected to the motherboard?

 

[pc-twitchy]

Dugimodo, sorry again, didn't see your last post.

Both power connectors? You mean the main 24(?)pin and the smaller 4(?) pin? Yes, both of those are in place. As well as the 2x4pin CPU connectors.