Replaced mobo, no PC output until I re-attach RAM

[csnoob]

My brother recently dropped his rig. I've since replaced the mobo and it works ok. But when it boots second time it has no output. It will only give output once I re-attach the RAM, which makes no sense to me.

GPU - has been tested on my rig and works correctly. (haven't tried to boot second time on it thought)
Mobo - has been replaced (exact same model)
CPU has been checked, pins ok and it has been re-positioned.

Any ideas what the problem might be? I'm 3rd year computer science so I'm supposed to have a pretty good idea but this is seriously weird.

 

[Barty1884]

Sounds like the RAM isn't fully seated - sometimes it's recognized as installed, others it's not.

Either that, or the contact pins needs to be cleaned up a little ....... or there's a possibility there's either something stuck in a RAM slot, or the slot(s) themselves are defective.

 

[csnoob]

Sounds like the RAM isn't fully seated - sometimes it's recognized as installed, others it's not.

Either that, or the contact pins needs to be cleaned up a little ....... or there's a possibility there's either something stuck in a RAM slot, or the slot(s) themselves are defective.

The mobo is new so the slots should be fine. I'll check the ram sticks tho and wipe them with a cloth and some alcohol. Thanks for the reply mate

 

[Barty1884]

*Should* be fine is no guarantee that they are. Almost any component (or part of) can be defective.

 

[Eximo]

Story time:

Abit was a pretty prevalent manufacturer back in the Pentium / K6 days. DDR was fairly new and my friend got himself a new motherboard, chip, and ram (also had SATA for the first time) He called saying that he couldn't get the ram to install. Thinking he had it backwards or something I came over and gave it a go. No luck, they just refused to go in.

We called Abit (dial up days) and they said that some of their boards had a run of defective slots that were too narrow, so they suggested forcing the sticks in, if anything broke they would cover the damage.

My friend put his whole body weight on it and the board cracked/shattered before letting the ram in. True to their word, a few days later a new motherboard showed up on the doorstep.

Sadly before digital cameras and phones were very common so we have no pictures of that fun day.