New Thunderbird 850 system is dead?!

[Guest]

My roommate recently purchased a brand new Thunderbird 850 and a Abit-Kt7A motherboard, 192M PC 100 RAM, brand new case w/a 300W power supply, plugged everything together and it won't even boot up to a start up screen. It turns on, the fan on the CPU switches over, the hard drives start to spin up and then the power kills. We tried playing with the switch on the back of the power supply; this caused power to stay on, but the drives all had their power lights on constantly (CDROMs shouldn't do this).


What's going on?

 

[soup20000]

I hope you know that there is a "power on self test" thing that happens. As soon as you plug in the power it will power up for 3 seconds and then die. This is to make sure it is working. So do this. Plug it in. Let it power up/down. Then turn it on. If that does not work make sure you have the buttons connected correct. Take off all the switches/lights and just keep on the power switch see if that works.

soup.

AMD for Life!

 

[dhlucke]

Is it an AMD approved powersupply? If you get a cheap one, sometimes they screw around by saying that it is a 300W supply, but that's at peak voltage (which it won't get to). So in reality you are getting a much lower wattage with a cheaper supply.

It's like buying somputer speakers that advertise 600W of power. They aren't using the rms value though, they are using the peak value. In other words they are giving you real numbers, but numbers that won't be acheivable in most cases. It's a gimic.

 

[Guest]

I didn't know about the power on test, no...but it would keep powering on and shutting down. I'll try again--my roommate's gone, so I'll be able to work in peace.

As far as the power supply is concerned, the case is a Tornado 1000 from 3DCool...I've got one of my own (250W power supply) and it works wonderfully (not to mention keeps everything extra cool, thanks to a judiciously cracked window... ).

Thanks!

Cipher

 

[Guest]

Checked 3Dcool's website...the power supply is "100% Athlon Compatible."


Cipher

 

[Guest]

And we have liftoff! I took everything apart, put it back together and it worked wonderfully. Apparently, the problem was that the CPU fan had been connected to the wrong power header on the motherboard. But all's well now and my roommate is happy.

Thanks, guys!

Cipher