I'm about to take a sledge hammer to this thing

[Blitersety]

Yesterday I took apart my pc so I could apply some new MX-2 thermal paste that I got and replace my IDE cable with a newer one that doesn't look as ugly. So I did what I needed to do and put it back together. Everything seemed to be going fine until I tried to turn it on. Nothing happened. Then I realized I had forgotten to reconnect the power, reset, and HDD LED cables to the mobo so I connected them. I double checked the manual to make sure they were connected properly.

Once again I tried to turn it on. I pushed the power button and the lights all came on, the fans started to spin up, everything was running fine.... for .5 seconds. Then it just shut itself down. No beeps or anything. Normally, when I take apart my pc to upgrade something, it will beep when I turn it back on for the first time, shut itself off, then restart and everything will be normal. This time that didn't happen; it didn't even beep. I waited 15 seconds then tried to turn it on again. Same thing. It didn't even get to post. In fact it didn't even finish detecting the RAM because I noticed only the bottom lights on my tracers came on and not the ones on the top that indicate memory usage.

So I took the computer completely apart again and reseated everything. This time I didn't even bother connecting any of the hard drives or optical drives, only the mobo, CPU, RAM, and video card. Same thing happened.

Once again I took the pc apart, this time paying careful attention to all of the wires to make sure nothing got damaged. It turns out the HD audio cable for my case that plugs into the mobo has one wire that somehow got pulled out of the connector and is just hanging loose. This is the only thing I could find wrong with the whole computer. There were no signs of a shortage on the mobo or anything.

Once I again I tried to boot up, this time without the HD Audio cable plugged in. Unsuccessful. I took out the RAM and tried to boot. Same thing. I took out the video card and tired to boot (so now it's just mobo and CPU). Still, it turned on for .5 seconds then turned itself off, no beeps, no nothing.

I don't know what to do now. I suspect that the problem has something to do with that damaged cable... I'm thinking it may have caused a short circuit or something, but there are no signs that it shorted (no burn marks or anything scorched, etc on the mobo).

So at this point I think the motherboard may have been fried but I'm really not sure. Does anyone have any ideas about what may have happened? Any I can get help is appreciated.

I don't even know what the warranty on my DS3R is so I may have to buy a whole new motherboard... I want to be certain that it's my DS3R causing the problems and not something else. I don't have any other LGA 775 mobos to test my system on though...

[ink68]

When you swing, make sure you keep the eye on the MOBO. Hint.

You know how everyone says, "well a buddy of mine..."? I can't stand that cliche. I think your mobo is out of commission. However, in a similar incident, the smell of static electricity was the signal of a toasted mobo. Who knows...

[dhgunit]

I had something similar happen to me and it was a bad PSU.

[Blitersety]

Originally Posted by ink68

When you swing, make sure you keep the eye on the MOBO. Hint.

You know how everyone says, "well a buddy of mine..."? I can't stand that cliche. I think your mobo is out of commission. However, in a similar incident, the smell of static electricity was the signal of a toasted mobo. Who knows...

I see what you are saying but I didn't smell any staticc electricity or anything like that.

I had something similar happen to me and it was a bad PSU.

I really hope you are right. The PSU would be a lot easier to replace than my mobo.

[krazyq]

if you got some spare money...go buy another psu, doesnt have to be high tech...
that happened with my mobo, but i took out the power cable and waited then put it back on...then my pc would restart every 5 sec and finall worked...i think it was resetting the mobo to defaul cos my oc was unstable.

[ink68]

ooo the PSU...interesting...try it

[atomic tofu]

doublecheck the cpu mount

[Blitersety]

I don't think the CPU is incorrectly mounted because I didn't remove it when I applied the MX-2 - all I did was take off the AF7, wiped off the AS5 with a coffee filter and isopropyl alcohol, apply the MX-2, and then put the AF7 back on. I really don't want to take the AF7 back off to check the CPU mount because I have a very hard time clipping it to the mobo, it really is a nightmare lol.

Also I forgot to mention before that I reset the cmos and that also didn't fix the problem. I've had it unplugged all day though so I'll try it again when I get home... my friend is going to come over this weekend and let me borrow his PSU to see if it will boot with that. Hopefully it does.

[krazyq]

well good luck man.
sometimes i just avoid small changed cos if something goes wrong after that, i regret messing around in the first place.
I might be doing stuff with my case sometime soon, but i might just leave it as is cos everything is fine now.

But theres something in us about tech or pcs in general...nothing is ever enough!

[Thresh]

This usually happens when the mobo is touching the case in some way. You have the spacers between the mobo and case, right? It sounds like it's shorting out on something.