Help building a PC (SLI)

[Cyberus]

My mate got a load of components and I helped him put them together. I've never built a PC before, but felt sufficiently technically minded to assist....

So anyway I've installed the mobo, the CPU (with heatsink), the ram, connected some fans and tried powering on.

The fans spin. But that's it.

So I borrowed an old PCI gfx card and put that in a slot, and connected a monitor, and also plugged in a mouse and a USB k'board I had lying around. But still, all I get is a power light on the mobo.

So questions are:
I assume an SLI mobo will get as far as the bios without an SLI gfx card?
And will it do so without any drives attached?

Anyone got any pointers, I feel like a bit of a newbie when it comes to tinkering with PCs, I've only ever tinkered with cars and Amigas lol!

[Cyberus]

Hey Duesi,
Long time no see!

I plugged in some headphones and got "CPU not installed properly" so I've just had the heatsink and fan off and repositioned the CPU, no bent pins, and a nice layer of thermal compound.

Why these heatsinks are such a {bleep} to get on off I don't know!

mobo: Asus A8N-SLI deluxe
cpu, some AMD 64 3700 , I forget which
RAM: Crucial 1GB DDR pc3200

Just gonna put it all back together and try again

[Cyberus]

@x-ray
yeah

just trying to get the retention clip on the heatsink to actually, well, err clip, at the moment!!!

[Cyberus]

Now I'm starting to wonder if I've got the heatsink on the right way round...I just cannot get the retention clip to 'clip'. All I have is a mobo manual with a very dark picture that shows nothing.

The CPU manual isn't here. And I'm worried that I'll trash the CPU if I'm not careful :-(

P.S. I assume an SLI PC will boot without an SLI gfx card?

[Cyberus]

Thanks for everyone's replies.
I have been really short of time recently, so I have only recently had the chance to have another go. Everything appears to be working well now, despite the fact that the heatsink doesn't seem to clip how I thought it was meant to, i.e. securely

Plugging some headphones in revealed that its says something like 'VGA error' which I took as a good sign (there is no gfx card installed, so I guess it passed all other tests up to this point).

The guy is meant to be ordering a gfc card when he gets paid tomorrow. Anyone got any recommendations?


P.S. Now I want to build myself a PC, now I've seen how relatively easy it is...if only I had the money :-(