8800GS Alpha Dog won't boot

[Mitch-]

I bought a new pc yesterday (well, I bought the parts and built it myself) and after putting everything in place and trying to boot up, nothing happens.

The computer turns on, back fan starts spinning, a few seconds later the cpu fan spins once or twice and another few seconds later the comp shuts off, then it turns on again a few seconds later and the cycle repeats.

Now I have no idea if this is even a GFX error (nothing comes up on the monitor, in fact it says it isn't connected, might be cause the pc is only on for like 5-10 seconds) but it sounds very similar to this guy's error http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21029

I'm using a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P MoBo and I haven't been able to find anything about compatibility problems.

Does anyone have any idea what my problem could be?

[Mitch-]

I took out 1 of the 2 RAM sticks and now I get beeps when I turn on the pc, it's a sequence of 3 beeps followed by a pause and then another 8 beeps, after that the comp shuts down and starts again a few seconds later (again beeping).

I looked in the manual of the MoBo and the beep codes are a bit vague..

Does anyone know what could be the problem?

[Methious]

Three then 8 beeps is usually the mobo telling you it hasn't detected any ram, or it hasn't detected a video card.

It may be that one of your ram sticks is bad, swap the stick you took out with the stick that's in there and see if it still beeps. Then try moving the ram stick to another slot to eliminate a bad ram slot.

If it's not the ram slot or ram stick then it may be the video card. Make sure you reseat the video card and that it's seated correctly. If you have another PCIE 16x slot try it in that slot.

Comes down to it just makes your brain ache disconnect every thing but the CPU/fan, one stick of ram, and the video card and try for a boot.

When the brain ache has passed into a migraine take the board out of the case and put the anti static bag in the mobo box with the board on that and connect the CPU/fan, one stick of ram, and GPU. That'll tell you if by chance it's a grounding problem.

While you have the board out check the motherboard standoffs (the little brass things that hold the mobo in, make sure their all tight and that their are no standoffs in spots where their are no holes in the mobo because that can cause grounding.

If you have another similar PC around try swapping parts until you find a faulty part or eliminate it being a faulty part.

[Mitch-]

Turns out one of the ram sticks was in the wrong slot, everything is working fine now.


The 8800GS is very noisy though, I read it's because the fan is always at full power.

What would be the best way to fix this? Replacing the fan altogether? What types of fans are compatible with the card?