New Computer - Let's talk about it.

[Grey Fox]

I don't know where to whine about this so I'll do it here.

Buying a TV sucks. It's worse then a car.

Nah, it's easier than a car

Buy a Panasonic, either the highest end model or the one just below, 55" and above.

No.

[Grey Fox]

...aaaaaaaand it looks like I may have a bad PSU.

I was going to put the PC into the case last night, but when I went to boot it from the onboard button, it couldn't finish the POST.  I pressed the button like ten times and eventually it did POST and put me into BIOS, but after that I could never get it to post successfully.  Most of the time it jut flashed '00' on the BIOS code window thingy, which isn't even a defined error code in the motherboard manual.  Also, the PSU was making a faint little clicking noise every time I tried to turn it on and the fan usually wouldn't spin up.  This is one of those fans that isn't supposed to spin up unless it 'needs to' so that's not necessarily indicative of a problem, though.

I happen to have a spare Antec TruePower 650W PSU in an old case, and I took it out of there and plugged it into the motherboard and tried it.  The PC booted right into BIOS, and did it each and every time I tried afterward (like 7 times or so).

Corsair has this thing on their website called 'the paperclip test' where you plug the PSU into a case fan and then connect two pins on the ATX line with a paperclip, which is supposed to determine if the power supply is dead or not.  I did that test and the power supply does power the case fan.  It doesn't seem to want to power my CPU and motherboard, though.

Oh well.  Guess I'll RMA it.  It's been a while since I've had a bad part mess up a build--last time that happened was like 10 years ago when I had a bad stick of RAM.

Woha, that sucks.

[Caliga]

Yeah, and the system POSTed successfully this morning twice with the Antec spare PSU, so it really looks like an issue with the PSU to me (fortunately... I'd much rather have that than a bad motherboard or CPU).

I'll probably finish the build out with the old PSU this weekend, which kinda sucks as it's not a modular power supply, so it's gonna be cable spaghetti everywhere.

[DontSayBanana]

Corsair has this thing on their website called 'the paperclip test' where you plug the PSU into a case fan and then connect two pins on the ATX line with a paperclip, which is supposed to determine if the power supply is dead or not.  I did that test and the power supply does power the case fan.  It doesn't seem to want to power my CPU and motherboard, though.

Oh well.  Guess I'll RMA it.  It's been a while since I've had a bad part mess up a build--last time that happened was like 10 years ago when I had a bad stick of RAM.

Wow, been a while since I've actually seen the paperclip test used.  Yeah, Just shorting the pins just verifies that it's getting power- to really test it, you need a multimeter to check each active pin separately.  If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say one of your 3.3V or 5V rails is off-voltage.  In general, the 12V rail being off still POSTs reliably, but you start encountering weirdness with attached devices like the hard drive or video card.

[Caliga]

All I had plugged into the motherboard at that time was the 12V rail and the 8 pin for the CPU (the video card and HDDs aren't even in yet).

[MadBurgerMaker]

I just got a new SSD, and am going to be running the OS and steam off of it.  Does the Windows upgrade trick still work with 8?   The thing where you install the upgrade twice and you end up with a full version.

[viper37]

I just got a new SSD, and am going to be running the OS and steam off of it.  Does the Windows upgrade trick still work with 8?   The thing where you install the upgrade twice and you end up with a full version.

I really have no idea...  It should, but I can't be certain.

One thing that is suggested: Install Windows 8, don't activate.  Upgrade to Window 8.1 then activate.  This could work.

Worst case scenario, Windows 7 ==> Windows 8.0 ==> Windows 8.1.

[DontSayBanana]

All I had plugged into the motherboard at that time was the 12V rail and the 8 pin for the CPU (the video card and HDDs aren't even in yet).

The P20 connector isn't flat voltage across the board.  Some pins are ground, some are 12V, some are 5, some are 3.3... unless you've got a monster of an aftermarket cooler, nothing around the CPU uses the 12V rail- the CPU itself cycles between 3.3 (low) and 5 (high) volt states for binary operations, and the CPU fan usually runs on a 5V rail.

http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/ATX_Pinout

[MadBurgerMaker]

I really have no idea...  It should, but I can't be certain.

One thing that is suggested: Install Windows 8, don't activate.  Upgrade to Window 8.1 then activate.  This could work.

Worst case scenario, Windows 7 ==> Windows 8.0 ==> Windows 8.1.

I just went ahead and put a copy of Windows 7 on there since I won't be getting the 8 upgrade disk until next week.  Forgot how much shit was involved when you start "clean" like that.  Should have made a damn image. 

[Caliga]

I gave the PSU another shot just to make sure I didn't seat the power cords correctly last time.  No POST.  I swapped my backup PSU in again.  POSTed immediately.  Looks like this bad boy is going back to NewEgg.

[DontSayBanana]

I gave the PSU another shot just to make sure I didn't seat the power cords correctly last time.  No POST.  I swapped my backup PSU in again.  POSTed immediately.  Looks like this bad boy is going back to NewEgg.

I'd say the keying on the PSU connector makes it extremely unlikely to put it in wrong, but then I discovered someone who managed to jam an RJ-45 plug into a USB socket.

[Grey Fox]

I gave the PSU another shot just to make sure I didn't seat the power cords correctly last time.  No POST.  I swapped my backup PSU in again.  POSTed immediately.  Looks like this bad boy is going back to NewEgg.

I'd say the keying on the PSU connector makes it extremely unlikely to put it in wrong, but then I discovered someone who managed to jam an RJ-45 plug into a USB socket.

That's kind of impressive, really.

[Caliga]

motherboard + CPU + RAM is now in the case with the backup PSU and POSTing successfully.  This afternoon I'll hopefully finish the wiring and get the graphics card, SSD, and optical drive (recycled from this PC) in there to make sure everything else works, and then install Windoze.

[Caliga]

Gonna try to install Windows by burning the DVD to an ISO and then copying it onto an 8 Gb bootable flash drive.

[Caliga]

It worked.  Installing now.