No signal to monitor - Bad graphics card?

[Kevin Kilcoyne]

I have a Dell XPS 8300 w/ Intel Processor and AMD Radeon HD 5770.

Yesterday I woke up and could hear one of the fans spinning much louder and the monitor had no video. Powered the monitor back on I got the No signal message. I opened the case up, turned it back on and it was the video card fan making all the noise. reseated some cables, took the graphics card out, reseated ram etc.

I'll listen for any beeps when I turn it on tonight, definitely wasn't a repeating beep. One beep is good and no beeps are bad?

My research thus far seems to point to a bad graphics card, motherboard or power supply. Is this assessment good, or could the loud noise of the fan and no signal indicate one over the other? I'd love to just order a graphic's card and cross my fingers, but that seems like a gamble.

I'm going to try putting an old graphics card in from an old computer to see if I can rule that out when I get home. Are there any potential problems I might encounter? The other computer is 7 years old and was half the price. Are the adapters pretty standard? It seems like graphics cards go obsolete pretty fast.

Thanks.

 

[tator_80]

If your motherboard has on board graphics, remove the GPU and run it off the on board graphics. If you get signal, it's your Discrete card.

 

[Kevin Kilcoyne]

If your motherboard has on board graphics, remove the GPU and run it off the on board graphics. If you get signal, it's your Discrete card.

The motherboard didn't have a vga port. I tried clearing the cmos and now there is no indication it's on other than the small light in the back showing it has power and the light on the motherboard. NO spinning fans or anything. I might throw the towel in and take it somewhere unless anyone has some other good suggestions. I wouldn't mind gambling with buying a new power supply
but I'd be a little intimidated to install a motherboard myself on a whim and for all I know the graphic's card could be spinning fast from a motherboard problem right? Don't want to gamble w/ a 200$ graphics card I end up not needing.

 

[Kevin Kilcoyne]

One other related question, If I get an external hard drive enclosure for my current hard drive that's running on windows 7 can I plug this into a mac or a computer running xp to access the data? Or would I have to reformat?

 

[tator_80]

Sounds like your Motherboard, but could also be the power supply, both of which a fairly easy to take out and install.
Are the fans of the computer connected to fan controllers on the motherboard or are the directly plugged into the PSU? If they aren't controlled by the motherboard, then its the Power Supply not giving enough power. If they are, the its your Motherboard going out since its not distributing the power throughout the system. If it's an older CPU maybe consider upgrading both CPU and Motherboard to a new socket to either 1155 or 1150 socket. You can upgrade to an 1155 socket for around $300 or less if you have to get a new OS, $200 or less if you don't.
Here's a good Mobo and CPu if your interested. I'll list a PSU to.
Motherboard: AS Rock LGA1155 Intel Z77 Quad CrossFireX SATA3 USB3.0 A GbE MATX Motherboard Z77 PRO4-M
CPU:Intel Pentium G2120 Dual-Core Processor 3.1 Ghz 3
PSU:Corsair Builder Series CX 500 Watt

Also, with 1155 you might be able to squeek by without upgrading the PSU, with the 1150 you cannot since the PSU's have to be certified to run the 1150 socket type Motherboards
1150 is more expensive since the cheapest processor for 1150 right now runs around $200, but the boards for both sockets are around the same starting price for a good one.
As far as accessing data from that drive, yes you can. I've done it numerous times with peoples hard drives that are failing and the computer wont stay on long enough to access it. Do not reformat that drive, since reformatting permanently deletes all data from the drive