I desperately need help. I am building 4 workstation computers for a small business. When I start all 4 of the computers that I built, they all cut off after about 3 seconds. They all have the same hardware. Gigabyte GA-7VKML, Athlon 1600 XP, Volcano 5 fan, PC2100 memory, 300 watt case. I have tried everything. Checked and double checked jumpers, made sure nothing is shorting the boards. I have no clue what is causing the problem. I have built many computers in the past and have never had this problem. It seems odd that all 4 have the exact same problem. It is like something is auto shutting it down. No beeps, just shuts down. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

hello well one thing for sure is they all have the same problem. 3 second shut down would sound like cpu heat sensor.your dip switches if any set to auto? that should be all off? power switch in back of psu set to 120/or 230 v,s? with one of the mobo,s removed and set on card board or anther none conducting surface. with every thing but hard drives and floppys conected will it boot to bios? did these boards come with on board graphics? and are you useing pci graphics or apg? with every thing disconected.except cpu psu and no ram do you get a continuos beeping? witch would indacate no ram.install ram? shut right down again? bout all i got for now.

Try resetting the bios. I know all my motherboards come with a warning telling me to clear the bios before I power it up. Other than that I would recommend switching the MOBO out of one of them and see if that fixes that problem. Very strange to get 4 dead boards in a row, but, hey, stranger things have happened. Once, one of the local shops got a whole case of ram chips that were bad, about 200 - 256MB chips

I think I solved the problem. I replaced the Volcano 5 fan on one of the computers with a volcano 8 fan. It started up with no problems. The Volcano 5 specs say it will work with the Athlon XP 1600, but I guess that isn't true. I would advise everyone to not buy the Volcano 5 if you are using an Athlon XP 1600 or higher. Thanks for everyone's help.