Umm, I started putting together all the parts I just got, and powered it on. The mobo, case fans, HSF all turned on, but I don't hear the HD spinning and the DVD drive isn't working too, I tried ejecting it but nothing. When the DVD drive came out of the box, the jumper was set on Slave. I switched it on Cable Select, did I set it right? On the screen it says no signal. There are 2 PCIe slots and I put the Video card on the lower PCIe slot because the on the top slot it seems like it would be sitting on the chipset fan. Is that a big deal, putting it on the lower PCIe slot? My mobo and processor was purchased from MonarchComputers as a combo and they set it up and tested, at least that's what they say when purchasing a combo. Here are the specs. POWER SUPPLY ANTEC TP2-550 EPS12V OCZ 1G(512X2) OCZ4001024PFDC-K RT DVD+/-RW LITEON SOHW-1693S BK RT VGA XFX|GF 6800GT 256MB PVT45GUDF3 DFI Lanparty UT NForce4 Ultra- D AMD ADA3700BNBOX Athlon 64 3700 939 Pin 90nm Boxed Rev. E Western Digital Caviar SE 200 GB SATAII 8MB Cache 7200 RPM And how do you hide those frigging extra PSU cables dangling?
Hi, Is your speaker connected to your motherboard? Do you get any beeps when you power the machine on? If you only have ond HDD and one dvd-rom, then try and put them both on differnt cables and set both to master. Not sure about the GFX card slots, but a quick check in the manual should confirm if you can put it in either. Hope you get sorted, its a nightmare to have new stuff and not being able to use it.
I know that some DVD drives dont like to be on cable select. I would set it to master. What about the number of beeps on post, or are you not getting any? Also try unplugging both the hard drive and the dvd drive from the system and try to post. Edit: Video card needs to be in the topmost slot!
No beeps. Basically it's the mobo and the fans just spinning when I turn it on, no activity from the SATA HD or the DVD drive. I'll try the video card ont the top slot.
Okay I got on the BIOS page but the DVD drive doesn't seem to power up. I plugged it on the secondary IDE and set it as master. Is that correct? Also the screen says something like Single Channel/ Dual Channel. Is it 2 RAM modules on 1 & 2 slot to get Dual channel or is it 1 and 3 slot?
McDung, the first button you press is 'Del' to get you into BIOS setup. Here, you go through page after page of setup. You have done that already, right? If you have no IDE harddisk and only 1 SATA drive, you need to setup your rig to boot from it :^) Your DVD should be master on the primary controller. I recommend you pickup an inexpensive 40GB IDE drive to start your rig from - we all need different HDs on different controllers, y'know? It's a big help, both for the OS and for working with audio/video files... Actually, 80GB/8MB ATA drives are pretty inexpensive now, $75 bucks Canadian (or about $15 bucks more than a 40GB/2MB). If you start your PC from this HD, it should be master on primary and your DVD would be master on secondary controller. Then your SATA drive mounts via OS. BIOS support for SATA drives is tricky - if you start PC with floppy bootdisk (DOS mode) you will find no HD recognised at all... You can start & run a PC from SATA drive only, but it limits you heavily what you can and cannot do. If you want DOS-level access or boot multiple OS's now or in future (Win98 + WinXP + Linux etc) you need an inexpensive UltraATA drive on that primary controller. You can later put Windows' swap file on it, too (good performance tip - swapfile on different HD on different controller than OS). And make sure you use the proper PCI-X video slot, too. If they are the same (?) then you should get video at power-on... You are gonna need video, first step, before you can even get into your BIOS to set things up. Nice mobo, BTW! She's a beauty... http://www.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_pr....jsp?PRODUCT_ID=3471&CATEGORY_TYPE=LP&SITE=US Note that RAID support on this mobo is spanned between SATA and PATA (UltraIDE) drives! So you could run 2 SATA drives striped, and use your IDE C:\ drive for parity - kewl. One more reason to spring for an IDE PATA drive... L8R
It sounds like your board is an SLI board.I just setup up an ASUS SLI board for my friend.You need two ram sticks for an SLI setup or it won't work.We tried one and it wouldn't boot to the screen gives a no sync to the monitor.The guy at the pc store put one ram card in the first slot skipped the second and placed the second ram card in the third module.And it boots like that in SLI.configuring SATA can be a pain in the ass.I paid the guy at the pc store to set mine up.But I read online that you have to get the SATA driver from the mobo disc saved on a floppy and press F6 when running setup of windows.Also the small card inbetween the two PCI-e slots cards make sure it's set to one card.It's just like a ram card for a lap top only configure your video cards.
good lord go into bios and play with the sata settings thats what i did .........a week later i asked my son for help turned out i hadn't formatted the darn thing you just need to go to the periphirals page in bios and set it to sata only boot up with the xp disc and it'll work if i was installing it on a new one the first time i would have realised about the formatting but everyone has to learn good luck
I sorted the HD and DVD problem without going to BIOS. Plugging and Uplugging everything works. Okay now I got Windows XP loaded on my new rig and as of now, I'm using it at this very moment! The only problem is still the Single Channel/ Dual Channel. I looked on the DFI website for the manual, and it says to put the modules on DIMM 2 and 4 if I want Dual Channel. But, after doing that my PC crashes while loading XP or just as soon as it finishes loading XP and a few seconds of seeing the Desktop it crashes. Same goes if I put the modules on DIMM 1 and 3. What now? By the way thanks to techguy26 and the others who gave me advice to build not buy pre-built. I just saved a bunch of money by building my own. As soon as everything is all installed and set, I'll start with the zip ties as everything else is sloppy right now.
Me too- I had troubles with my 2x512MB, if I put them on 1 channel I got 1024MB no problem. But dual-channel was unstable. The answer was to relax memory timings totally (to SPD only) and goose the memory voltage, just a hair (from 2.6v > 2.8v). I have seen overclocking memory reviewed, where the manufacturer frankly admits that the voltage must be increased to 2.8 > 2.9 even 3v to achieve fast timings at maximum rated speed. This explains the elaborate heat-spreaders on most modern big-$$ performance memory these days... Anyway, relax the timings and goose the voltage to run dual-channel with stability and reliability :^) Regards
Yes. It can start up okay with either one RAM module running. And The OGS can you explain in layman's term what "relax" the timing means and what "goose" the voltage.
