possible GPU problem but seemingly illogical

[db1101]

Hi,

I can't work out what the problem is after doing different tests which appear to produce different results.

It's an old Pc, which I am having to use because my laptop broke!:

asus m2n4-sli motherboard
4gb RAM (recently upgraded from 2)
amd x2 athlon 5600+ (2.3GHz)
nvidia geforce 8600GTS

About a month ago, my power supply (550W) broke so I replaced it very recently with an ACE 600W one (I do know that these are not the best power supplies, but this is an old computer and i only want it to last a year or two more at best so didn't want to fork out).

Anyway, the power supply came and i replaced the old one. The computer turned on which is more than it was doing before, so good start. The screen however wasn't displaying anything. I had had a problem like this a few months back which I solved (weirdly) by unplugging the HDD and replugging it back in. So I tried this... i unplugged it, switched the computer on and the display worked fine. I then turned it off, replugged in the HDD and booted again... again it worked fine. It booted windows and just as it was displaying the windows 7 loading thing, it crashed (blue screen of death). At this point I thought I must have a hard drive problem.

I unplugged it again and booted... but with no result. I now cannot seem to get the screen to display at all, with or without the HDD plugged in.

I tried taking out the CMOS battery from the motherboard to see if there was some kind of problem with the BIOS config but this didn't work.

I couldn't work out why it was displaying those few times and now not so I also tried taking out the GPU and dusting it off (thinking the problem might be that the GPU has been damaged), and I tried plugging it into the other slot in the motherboard, neither of which worked. I am thinking that maybe the PSU took out the graphics card somehow. Unfortunately, I don't have a spare computer to test it on 🙁.

(I have checked that the monitor and cable works, of course!)

I am stuck for ideas to try, if anyone has any it would be great!

Thanks,

Dan.

 

[db1101]

I don't know if anyone has any suggestions to this, I recently got a new GPU (Radeon hd 4870), in order to test whether that was the problem. It requires 2 6 pin adapters, and annoyingly the PSU only has one (I know, I should have checked). Anyway, I posted a thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1988915/gpu-connector-display.html

According to the one answer, the screen should still display at least even if the GPU is underpowered. The PC doesn't turn off, and the graphics card does go on with just the one connector. This would imply that the GPU was not the problem (unfortunately). So, does anyone else have any suggestions of what I could do? I am starting to lose hope as all I can think of is that either the motherboard, or the slot for the GPU is broken. Either way, that would pretty much mean the end of the PC.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Dan.

 

[db1101]

Right, I have now resolved the problem. I got a RAM upgrade from 2 to 4gb not long ago, I unplugged the two new RAm chips and the display works. I didn't try this because I cannot understand how the RAM could affect the display! (I still don't understand how this can happen). I just posted this incase anyone else has a similar problem.