I'm going to need some help on this one guys!
Bought a 775Dual-VSTA from the boards and noted some damage around some caps. I put the whole thing together and tested it, no go. Assumed it was due to the damaged caps. Bought a 4Core, inspected thoroughly (no damage) and loaded her up. I had heard that it's a good idea to be sparing with the equipment you load onto a new mobo on first assembly so I installed the following components:
Pentium D 945
Zalman 9500
Thermaltake TR2 420W
Ocz El Gold DDR400 (2x256MB)
Excelstor (cheapo) 40GB drive (my boot drive)
D-Link Wifi card
Gainward 6800GT GS GLH
These are the exact components that I took off of my old system and placed on the new board. I must admit, I did put in just three chassis screws initially (doubt that made a difference). I plugged it all in and lit her up, the fans spooled up, the lights on the Gainward and the wifi card lit up, the hard drive spooled up, and then nothing happened. I swapped in some Corsair XMS DDR400 I also had, and no change. I pulled out the wifi card, nothing. I swapped in an MX4000 vid card, nothing. I unplugged the IDE drive and hooked up a WD 120GB SATA I drive, nothing. I repeated all of the steps but pausing to clear the CMOS, nothing.
The exact scenario is that when I plug the powercord into the powersupply with the switch off and then turn the switch on, the fans spin only sometimes (often after a rest). When I plug in the cord while the switch is in the on position, it pretty much always spools up, but never POSTs. Pressing the PWRBTN does nothing. Switching the machine off (from the PS) while the fans are spinning and then turning it back on means the fans don't spin anymore. This is the exact same problem I had with both the 775Dual and the 4Core. Hooking everything (the whole kit and kaboodle) back up to my old board boots right up.
The only things I haven't tried are a different PS (don't have one to test with) or other RAM (cheaper DDR or DDR2). I have some cheap DDR in another machine I might dig out, and I should receive some DDR2 by FedEx today, so I'll try those. But really, I'm at a loss. I have sifted through a lot of forum topics and found nothing similar. Anyone have any suggestions?
Tno