A8N-SLI Premium : problems

[goj993]

Hi. I hope someone can point me in the right direction here...
I've just bought a bunch of components to build a new PC, including
A8NSLI Premium mainboard, Athlon64 X2 3800+ CPU and Gigabyte 6600GT
PCI-E gfx card.
Can't get it to work though. The board gets power, but I get nothing
from the graphics card and no warning beeps or messages from the post
reporter.
If I remove the memory, I do get a "System failed memory test" message
from the post reporter. However, with the memory in place, removing the
graphics card or the keyboard doesn't give any warning messages.
Replacing the gfx card with an old PCI card has no effect either, nor
does using a different monitor.
I tried removing the mainboard from the case and standing it on a
cardboard box, which made no difference, so it doesn't seem to be a
grounding problem.
The PSU should I hope be powerful enough (450W, 12v@15A), particularly
as there are no HD, DVD, USB devices etc attached at this stage.
I have noticed from Asus' support site that my CPU isn't listed as
supported, although other X2 CPU's are. Shame on me for believing the
"supports AMD64 X2 CPU's" message on the website from which I purchased
the board...
Is there anyone out there who could suggest how to narrow down where
the problem lies, before I start sending things back? Unfortunately I
don't know of anyone with either a socket 939 or PCI-E board to test my
CPU/gfx card in their mobo or vice versa.
Cheers,
G

 

[Natéag]

When that happened to me, the CPU was defective. There may be
other reasons of course.

 

[Russell S]

This board is notorious for this same issue being experienced by many users.
First: your board needs BIOS version 1005 or higher to use an X2 series
Athlon64. Did the motherboard box include an "AMD Dual Core CPU Support"
notation on the front of the box. If so, you have at least BIOS version
1005 already, which would rule that out of the equation. The second thing
to try would be to temporarily try only one RAM module in the B1 slot (blue
memory slot furthest away from the processor) if you have more than one RAM
stick; this board is notoriously buggy with many memory configurations, and
is extremely picky about accepting only particular RAM model numbers as
well.

Check out the Asus forum for this board (as well as for the A8N-SLI and
A8N-SLI Deluxe versions of this board) at
http://vip.asus.com/forum/bbs.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A8N-SLI Premium
to see that others are experiencing the same thing you are, and what they've
done to try to fix it.

Good luck to you

 

[John Lewis]

Hi. I hope someone can point me in the right direction here...
I've just bought a bunch of components to build a new PC, including
A8NSLI Premium mainboard, Athlon64 X2 3800+ CPU and Gigabyte 6600GT
PCI-E gfx card.
Can't get it to work though. The board gets power, but I get nothing
from the graphics card and no warning beeps or messages from the post
reporter.

Are <<ALL>> power-sockets on the board correctly connected to the
power-supply ? Check the motherboard manual very carefully. Does your
power-supply properly support this board in terms of provided
connectors ? 12V @ 15amps will be insufficient anyway for a full
system including CPU+graphics card + HDisks + DVD/CD rom
drives.......... obviously a very old power-supply design.

John Lewis

 

[goj993]

All, thanks very much for your helpful replies. I'm pleased to report I
now have a working system.
As Russell suggested, the board is picky about RAM configuration, and
the solution in my case was simply to find the right combination of
slots to use.
The motherboard manual is a little confusing here, as is the fact that
only a small number of the possible combinations of memory sticks in
slots result in the "System failed memory test" message.
For the record, I now have 2 sticks of Corsair TwinX Pro 1024mb 3200 C2
in the 2 slots nearest the CPU (one blue, one black).
Taking on board John's comments, next on the shopping list is a better
PSU...
Thanks once again. G