Power supply question.

[mattbrinkman1]

Okay all, really quickly I"m building a computer and installing the parts piece by piece, right now i have the cpu, disk drive, and the GPU, My computer will turn on but a couple of seconds later it will shut back off. Is this because I don't have a hard-drive or ram installed or is it my PSU? if it matters I have a Antec 550watt one. thanks in advance.

 

[szbxa]

You need all parts for a computer to boot, that should be obvious to you. No harddrive no ram=no boot.

 

[mattbrinkman1]

I kinda figured that but being this my first build my natural instinct is that if power if given to the psu it should maintain a current, but trust me your answer is a much better one then I was thinking haha

 

[szbxa]

the thing to notice is you boot your PC through the motherboard, the moment it powers up it checks for hardware functionality and everything is coded out, as soon as it finds out you don't have RAM it just shuts off by itself.
I'm not sure if you can boot to BIOS with ram and without hard drive, maybe you wanna try that out.

 

[hunter315]

You need RAM in the system for it to boot, but normally it will sit there in an infinite loop because it needs the RAM to proceed with POST. Put it together, then see if it boots, doing piecemeal assembly checking every step of the way just makes you more likely to find a unique quirk of your motherboard or system that will never show up in a proper system.

 

[mattbrinkman1]

Yeah that makes since, I was turning it on and it would run for a bit, turn off, and then turn back on I should have my ram here soon. Thanks for the info.