Help building a PC (SLI)

[X-ray]

@ Odin

hehe

The man is battling to get it on and I am just pointing out all his slot options  ;-)

[odin]

Touché :lol:.

[duesi]

@ Homer ASUS Mainboards are Jumperfree since a long time.

@ Cyberus I got it possibly

for Athlon64 3700+ you need at least BIOS Version 1015.005
so take an older CPU first and Update the BIOS.
That may work.

and yes a SLI Motherboard Boots with any Type of GFX-Card
except AGP ofcourse :-)

I'm kind of ASUS expert.
I built hundreds of PC's with that Brand of Mobo's

[X-ray]

@ Cyberus

Did you win or not?

[Tomas]

You should see a grove in most cases on one side of the bottom part of the heatsink. This should go towards the white edge sticking up a bit on the cpu socket the edge where the socket name/model is probably written.

Here is a example pic where the grove is at the bottom part of the underside:


Also remember that the fan must be connected to the right power output, as most mobos are as default set to not turn on if it detects no cpu fan.

good luck.

[The_Editor]

How many Post beeps did you get ?

No beeps usually is pretty serious.

ie: fuxx0red cpu

[The_Editor]

Sometimes if someone has set the timing to agressively in the BIOS it does that too.


Try removing the battery and crossing the jumpers to set the bios back to default.

[Tomas]

No beeps usually is pretty serious.

It should beep even without a cpu.

[The_Editor]

YES it should.

Thats the point.  If it doesn't when the cpu is in place...

Guess what !!

[Homer]

Cripes don't talk to me about memory settings combined with Asus motherboards ! When I built this beasty with an XP3000 AMD chip and 1Gb RAM, I was tempted to play with the BIOS after I had it working nicely, and found: Memory settings - Normal or Aggressive. Well, you have to try aggressive yes ? While I watched, it booted and the HDD light came on and that was all. No problem I thought, reboot. I have 2 large PATA HD with two partitions on each. English WinXP on the primary partition of the first, and Korean XP on the primary partition of the second. The installations of XP were backed up {"Ghosted"} onto the other drives secondary partition. Practically perfect yes ? No. The motherboard destroyed both hard drives as it crashed. No rebooting from either drive. I downloaded the manufacturers "Drive Fitness Tools" (DFT) and found that both drives were beyond repair. Not bad for a couple of 1 month old drives ! Well, what can you do (other than send both drives back on warranty) ? I sent an email to Asus and told them what had happened, and asked them to rename the BIOS setting of "Aggressive" to "Self Destruct" ! Surprisingly they answered and said that "they would look into the issue"  :lol:

[Linchpin]

check the CPU power lead is connected... i think all A64 mobos have a seperate 4 wire lead connected to the CPU power... without this i think you just get spinning fans....

[Tomas]

Then it either works or mobo is dead?

I would think that it would in most situations beep "no cpu" if a dead cpu is mounted in the socket.

[InTheSand]

Homer wrote:
...asked them to rename the BIOS setting of "Aggressive" to "Self Destruct"...

Hehe!  :lol:

But people being people would still probably try it out, just for the hell of it!

It's a bit like having a web site with a "Do not press this" button on it - almost guaranteed to get people clicking it!

 - Ali

[daverobev]

Ehh I hope I'm wrong here but...

on the newer AMD chips, you don't "push down" like you did with the old socket A stuff, you "apply pressure by unscrewing" - not gonna take photos, but basically you screw at the top of one retainer and it goes down; fit the heatsink on top of the cpu; unscrew which steadily applies pressure. Its set so that, when you can't unscrew any more, the right amount of force is applied between the heatsink and IHS (integrated heatsink - melded to the cpu).

Edit - I should say, the locking mech depends entirely on the heatsink, but even so the two screwdrivers story is scary - care to phost (eek that came out of nowhere, post photos...phostos?)

As to what the actual problem is, do the following:

take out everything except the cpu, one stick of ram, and a pci graphics card. I have no idea about SLI boards, but of course do as required to turn off/disable the PCI-E SLI stuff that it says in the manual.

See if it will POST with cpu, one stick of ram, the fans, and thats all attached.

As mentioned make sure you have attached a 20-pin ATX connector and the newer-but-not-that-new 4 pin extra header; if your PSU doesn't have one you can either get an ATX to ATX+4pin splitter, or to be honest if its high powered stuff, you'd be better off getting a new and decent psu.

Again just checking, but a "nice" layer of thermal interface material (TIM) is very very thin...unless you're using a lump pad thing.

[The_Editor]

Thats a very good point Linchpin. I forgot about the extra power rail needed for CPU.


My Msi SLi or rather .. the wifes.

[Linchpin]

Tut tut... good job someone around here know's what he is doing ...


 :lol:

Only joking... by the way..