Good morning sages of computerdom! I come asking for wisdom. I've been attempting to put together a small form factor PC for my father (this has been a delayed Father's Day gift). The computer set up is as follows: MB: Biostar GF7050V-M7 HDD: Western Digital Caviar 160GB IDE RAM: 2GB Mushkin HP2-PC6400 CPU: Intel Pentium E2180 CDROM: Pioneer DVD-ROM Case: Apevia X-QPACK2-NW-AL (micro ATX) GPU: mobo onboard (NVIDIA) Display (used for testing): Dell 2408WFP (VGA port) With the above setup, I began putting the computer together. The Apevia case included temperature LCDs for the hard drive and CPU as well as a 500W power supply. After assembling the pieces and putting 1 2GB stick of RAM into the box, I made sure all of the power connectors were correctly on the board, then pressed the power button. The fans started running, CD-ROM drive started spinning, HDD started spinning, then......no video output nor any system beeps to acknowledge a successful boot (or a problem for that matter). Over the course of several hours, i swapped in 3 other RAM sticks (all Mushkin HP2-6400 sticks, all 2GB size) to see if i might have had a bad stick of RAM. No luck with getting any sort of output to the monitor after 4 different pieces of RAM (of which i know they all work b/c i memtested them before beginning this project). I tried disconnecting individual components (CD-ROM, HDD, etc) to no avail. The motherboard BIOS would not even give me the slightest video output signal. Subsequently, I sent the board back to Newegg.com via an RMA and patiently waited for a replacement. However, the problem I'm encountering now lies in the fact that I received the replacment mobo (same model) last week, and tried to re-assemble the computer again this weekend. After reassembling all of the pieces, still no video output from the motherboard video connection. I again repeated the piece by piece removal process to find the faulty hardware....again, to no avail. After scouring the internet for a bit, I found some tech help sites talking about how this specific Biostar mobo will not boot initially to an IDE drive. However, none of the threads I could find ever found any resolution to this issue. Does anyone have any knowledge of this problem with these motherboards? I ask you, the combined computing knowledge of Computing.Net, can anyone find any steps that I am forgetting or procedures I am missing in assembling this computer? I currently need to install Windows XP onto a freshly formatted IDE HDD, and cannot get any sort of video signal from the motherboard during the POST process. I've worked in a static-free environment during assembly and do not believe that I have damaged the hardware in any way. I am leaning towards the replacement mobo being defective, but if anyone has any suggestions, please please comment! Thanks!

Support DDR2 667/800 MHz That's the memory required by the mother board.

Guapo, Thanks for taking the time to read and reply. However, I'm not sure that I exactly understand your message. So far as I know (from the tech specs at least), the 2GB Mushkin stick(s) i used in the comp are DDR2 & 800Mhz. Could you clarify what your reply means? Thanks!

You should ALWAYS benchtest before assembling components within a case. I recommend that you remove the board from the case & start from scratch. See responses #2 & 3 in the following thread: http://www.computing.net/answers/ha...

I was trying to say that your memory has to match those specifications. If it doesn't, the thing won't run.

Jam, Thanks for steering me towards the bench test. However, after bench testing it 3 times with 3 different pieces of working, compatible RAM modules, as well as a boot up with no RAM to see if the RAM was causing the non-POSTing behavior, I've come to the conclusion that this mobo is probably dead also. I'm returning it today and have already snagged a Gigabyte replacement. If i have any more problems, i'll come back here for advice. Thanks for everyone who had suggestions!

Update (7/20/08): After receiving the new Gigabyte motherboard from ZipZoomFly, I proceeded to do another round of bench testing. Setup: the mobo is sitting on a non-conductive rubber mat, and only the CPU, heatsink fan, primary board power cable and 1GB of Crucial RAM are installed. The motherboard's VGA out is connected to a Dell WFP 2408 LCD monitor set to the VGA input. Again, the bench test resulted in absolutely no video output to the monitor. (note: i connected an ancient comp I had around [ATI X800 graphics card with VGA out only] to the monitor with a VGA cable to see if it was the cable or monitor, and the POST messages came through perfectly fine on the LCD in VGA) In order to see if i somehow had a bad processor, I went to a local Fry's yesterday and purchased an brand spanking new Intel E4600 Core 2 Duo to test in the setup. During multiple iterations of the bench test with the 6 different sticks of RAM (4 2GB sticks [Mushkin], 2 1GB sticks [Crucial]), the board fails to POST even once. When I press the power button, everything appears to be starting up correctly mechanically, but no video output or POST messages of any kind are present. I even hooked up the Audio connectors and internal speakers to see if I could get a beep error code, but no audio output was present either. I am seriously coming to my wits' end with this machine. After trying 2 separate Intel processors, 3 motherboards and 6 different sticks of RAM (all in an ESD-free area and all the boot failures coming during bench testing!), I still am baffled as to why it will not POST. I also find it highly unlikely that I've received 3 DOA motherboards from 2 separate companies, consecutively. Does anyone have any ideas for what might be causing my problem?