Ok, I bought a new motherboard, cpu, ram. It’s a PCchips M848LU rev 1.2, athlon 2000 XP, PC2700 DDR 256 ram chip. I installed the CPU onto the motherboard (not my first time) with the fan and heat sink of course. Installed it into my old case. Added the ram (in the first slot). Cleared the cmos, hooked up the motherboard to the power supply. Put in my AGP 4x visiontek geforce 3 64 meg card, hooked up monitor, case power cable. Hooked up case switch to board and turned it on…the monitor flashes to black from the test screen for a second then back to test screen. I’ve heard mixed reports whether all 8x AGP slots take 4x cards, so I went to bestbuy and brought an Asylum Geforce FX 5200 Ultra 128 AGP 8x card. Same thing happens, same thing happens with my PCI video card. There are no lights on the motherboard to test…I did try to plug in a floppy drive to see if it would read it, the floppy drive light did come on when I hooked it to the motherboard, thou I'm not sure if it was reading it, it only made sounds for a few seconds. It is a 300w case. Is there something I’m forgetting? Am I confusing compatibly? I suppose something could have been DOA at my mailbox, I bought it from newegg thou, thou you never know. I don’t have anything I can put the RAM or cpu in to test or a different cpu/ram to put in the board. Thank you all for help.

Sounds like you did everything right. Is the speaker hooked up and are you getting any bios beeps?

Yes check for bios beeps, if you get a 1 beep that means that youy are posting. If don't get any beeps that means that there is a problem with either your CPU, Motherboard, Video Card, or RAM. First off check to see if your motherboard isn't shorted out, you may have soemthing touching the bottom of the motherboard in your case that is restricting it from booting. Check to make sure that the CPU's heatsink is correctly and firmly down on the CPU, sometimes when the heatsink and fan are not correctly installed the CPU recognises this and restricts the booting process. If your fans in your case are spinning when the power button is pressed, this means that there is more than likly NO PROBLEM with the power supply. If these ideas havn't worked, take all of the components out of the case then ONLY CONNECT 1.Motherboard 3.CPU + Heatsink/Fan 2.Power Supply 3.Ram 4.Video Card Make sure before you test this setup out that you have a static proof sheet under the motherboard to stop static electricity. Take your time in this setup making sure all connections are secure. Press your power button, if still you get NO RESPONSE. 1.Try a new CPU, as this one may be Fried 2.Swap the ram into a different DIMM slot Also with your video card issue, all AGP 8x agp slots are 4X agp card compatible. Just a suggestion, your Geforce 3 is better than your Geforce FX5200 Cheers

Sounds like a DOA mainboard. I'm not sure what you mean by the "test screen", I assume you mean the initial boot screen. #1. Move your RAMstick to a different slot. That did it for me once. #2. Make sure your heatsink fan is plugged into either CPU FAN, or FAN1. Be sure to check your manual. If you have fan-failsafe in your BIOS that will cause it to shut down if you plug the fan into any other socket.

I am buying the same motherboard and I had to E-mail PC chips to make sure the RAM I was getting was right. You need non-ECC nonRegistered RAM for it. That coudl be your problem