Problem with newly purchased computer

[dmelchart]

Hi, I recently purchased a prebuilt system for my father from NCIX. It is just a cheaper computer as that was all he needed. Here is the link with all the parts plus I put in a wireless PCI card and a dvd drive: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=36365&vpn=NCIXPC-V140&manufacture=NCIXPC

Now, the first time that I went to boot it up there were no post beeps or anything and nothing was displayed on screen. I opened up the computer and reseated the ram and than it booted fine and I installed the OS and whatnot. I left it for a bit and came back about 2 hours later and when I went to turn the screen on nothing came on, the computer was still running but there was no display at all. I once again took the ram out and put just one stick in thinking that maybe one was bad so I ran memtest on the first one than changed them and ran memtest on the other one. Both went without errors.

Now I left it all night and it worked fine in the morning and than I came back to it after my breakfast and I decided to try rebooting the computer to make sure that that would work fine.....computer started up but NO post beeps and no display. I really don't know what's going on here. It is onboard video so could it be that the video is going although I thought I would hear some sort of error beeps on startup than? Could it be that the whole motherboard is messed up?

Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

 

[hunter315]

Does it have a case speaker? If not you wont hear any beep codes you may have to get one. First though i would give it another shot and if you can get it to boot even far enough for bios get into it and post the temperatures here so we can make sure its not and overheating issue.

 

[jitpublisher]

What voltage does the memory require, and what is it set at in the BIOS? Sounds to me like undervolted memory.

 

[dmelchart]

It does have a case speaker as when I got it to boot before I could hear posting beeps. Now however when I try to boot it absolutely nothing comes up on screen and I can't even get to or see the bios splashscreen. Also, I don't think that it is overheating as I had this problem the first time I plugged it in as well and I don't think that it should have been hot already, or at least not hot enough to cause a problem.


Edit: The undervolted memory is a good suggestion, I did not think of that, I will go try it now thanks.

 

[dmelchart]

I tried to set the voltage but the motherboard is clearly no frills as it doesnt have a voltage option and even when I install their included "Dual Core Centre" and try to check the ram voltage it just gives me "N/A" I was however able to check the temps, 31 for CPU 30 for system. I got it to boot into Vista again now by once again removing and putting the memory back in....I assume this must be resetting the system?

 

[orangegator]

It could be a flaky, cheap psu. Do you unplug it when you reseat the ram? Do you have another psu to test with?

 

[hunter315]

Looking at the parts list is a seasonic PSU so it shouldnt be an issue, but its always possible. reseating the ram shouldnt affect anything except the ram unless something you are doing in the act of reseating the ram is fixing it.

 

[dmelchart]

I don't unplug the PSU when I reseat the ram and in fact I don't actually do anything else when I'm doing it so I don't think anything else is fixing it while reseating the ram which leads me once again down the road I origionally took in thinking that at least 1 stick may be bad. I guess my best option is to probably leave memtest running all night and see what I get.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

I agree that it would seem to be a RAM problem. You said you tested each stick individually, but did you run the test with both sticks installed? I've seen RAM pass about 6 passes of memtest86+ before it started getting errors. Running it overnight with both sticks installed is a very good idea.

 

[dmelchart]

Just ran memtest86+ for 10 passes with no errors, tried restarting computer after and it got to the vista splash screen than froze up with vertical coloured lines across the screen. Now when I try to restart it it is back to the origional problem of not even booting to the BIOS and giving no post beeps. Could this be the onboard video causing the problem? I'm thinking that I may have to send this back to ncix and see what they say.