lanparty pro975b

[remster]

i am building a computer using the lanparty pro875b with a p4 northwood 2.8 533 bus. i am also using dualchannel 512 mb pc2700. the computer powers up but does nothing, just a black screen. tied a different video card and same problem. while looking at the lanparty manual i fouind it kind of confusing when trying to decide what memory to use with the 533 bus as apposed to the 800mhz bus.

my question is if anyone has this board along with this processor what kind of memory can i use? do i need regular ddr and not dual channel ddr? i have seen this problem before with wrong memory or bad memory and i dont have a ddr chip to try. any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Nick]

Ram is probably not your problem. A certain bus frequency is not tied to a particular RAM speed, the board should adjust DIMM:CPU ratio automatically. Your 533FSB cpu should work just fine with any memory your board supports and it does support PC2700. Also Dual Channel is not a type of RAM but rather a technology that will boost performance when using two identical sticks in the proper slots.

So if I don't think its memory, then I should probably suggest something else. Are there any beeps when you turn the system on? No beeps indicates the CPU isn't even starting to POST (power on self test). This could be a bad CPU or perhaps you forgot to plug the 4-pin power connector in. If you are getting beeps then that is a sign that the board and CPU are operating and some other issue is probably the cause.

You should also try resetting the BIOS. Generally this is done with a jumper on the board but this actually does not clear the BIOS settings. Rather ut sets a bit that when the system POSTs indicating the BIOS is corrupted causing it to revert to defaults. To truly clear the BIOS, you should actually disconnect power to the board, wait for the capacitors to discharge (10-15 seconds), then turn the battery on the board upside down for a few seconds. This shorting of the battery leads will actually clear all the registers in the BIOS.

One last thing I can suggest is that you plug in the LED terminal that came in the FrontX panel box. The 875B does not have all the diagnostic LEDs on board and instead comes with that external LED terminal. Refer to your manual to decode the meaning of the LEDs when you try to power your system on.

Generally the problem is some simple user-error problem. I once saw two engineers trying to troubleshoot a board that wouldn't power-up. While they were trying to swap the CPU out I suggested that they should probably turn the switch on the power supply to on first. And I don't know how many times i've forgot the 4-pin aux power when setting up a system.

Hope that helps and post what you try here and maybe we can think of something else to try. :D