New System Reboots After 9 Seconds, Then Again After 2 Seconds

[seidleroni]

I just built a new system (my first!) and I hit the power switch and the lights on the motherboard light up, all the fans turn on, and the LED's on the CD drive and I hear the hard drive clicking. Then 9 seconds after I turn the system on, it reboots and then after another 2 seconds, it reboots again.

I disconnected the CD drive, the hard drive, and the graphics card, thinking I was overloading the power supply (500 Watt). However, once I disconnected all the aforementioned items, the same thing happened. All thats connected in this case is the motherboard, some fans, the cpu and the CPU cooler (whose fan is working). Any idea whats causing the system to continuously reboot?

Also - I'm not hearing any beeps from the BIOS or anything, but I dont have any speakers connected.

Any ideas what could be causing the continuous reboots?

 

[seidleroni]

Just as a followup: I disconnected the "Reset" switch to see if it was stuck closed, causing it to endlessly reboot. Unfortunately, once I disconnected the reset switch, the same thing kept happening.

Anyone have some ideas?

 

[thisguyhere]

I had something similar like this happen to my non-new custom pc. It turned out to be the power supply was the problem, so i replaced it and everything's fine again.

 

[seidleroni]

Could it be that my CPU is overheating? Would that cause the same response (constant reboots)?

 

[seidleroni]

Does anyone have an idea if this could be caused by CPU overheating or a CPU related issue?

 

[seidleroni]

I tried re-seating the CPU thinking maybe it wasnt attached properly. I noticed I put too much thermal grease on originally and took much of the excess off with a Q-tip. There was still a little around on the CPU - but not touching any of the pins on the bottom. I even took the motherboard out of the case, but its still happening. I'm waiting for another power supply soon, but could it be the motherboard is damaged somehow? or the CPU?

 

[shortstuff_mt]

I would go through this checklist:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-build-post-checklist

Problems like this can also be caused by RAM problems. I would follow the instructions in the checklist to try each stick of RAM by itself in each RAM slot.

 

[seidleroni]

I tried each stick of ram separately in each slot (to see if a slot was bad or a stick of RAM). Same issue. Not sure if its of any help, but it seems that when the system is rebooting, the power supply fan turns off, so it looks like the power supply is being restarted, too. Does this mean its a power supply issue or could the motherboard be telling the power supply to turn off?