whats wrong?

[foreverviet88]

i cant tell whats wrong with my computer

it used to keep restarting itself, but now it wont even start
when i turn on the computer it just shows the brand of the motherboard

[foreverviet88]

i didnt know how to edit the post above so....:p

before the computer crashed it would used to restarts then give me a black screen and says failed to overclock and press f2 to load default settings, the weird thing is, i never overclocked it i just built it and turn it on and install the OS and motherboard chipset disc

the computer lasted a year before all this started :(

[The Wise Monkey]

That's weird...

If you open up your PC and take a look at the motherboard, there should be a small silver battery on there - take it out and leave it for about 5 mins, then put it back and try booting again.

Doing this will reset the BIOS to its original fail-safe settings, and might help solve the problem.

[foreverviet88]

done, all that happened was it said my clock is wrong and i should reset it after i set it the computer restarts and now it doesnt even go to the screen that display the brand of the motherboard everything was black

do you think it could be my cpu?
or my motherord?

[The Wise Monkey]

Could be either... XD

Check all cables are connected up properly inside, just to see if anything may have come loose. It does sound like some piece of hardware has stopped working, but it is difficult to diagnose which one.

Try booting your PC with the most basic components in - motherboard, CPU, video card and one stick of RAM.

[foreverviet88]

nope still the same thing

[The Wise Monkey]

My advice would be to take it to your local PC repair shop and get them to have a look at it as they will have lots of spare components lying around to test your system with.

Sorry I couldn't really help. :(

[foreverviet88]

thanks for trying =]

but anyways one last thing
after switching the cpu i realized its not the cpu (after i bought a new one !)
its not the graphic card
i didnt switch the ram but i figure the computer would atleast start with no rams
so it comes down to harddrive and motherboard
soooooo....my question is the computer would atleast start without the harddrive right???

so im thinking its the mother board
what do you think

or maybe there is somthinh wrong with my spec??

im using
asus p5kc motherboard
nvidia geforce 8800 gt
intel core 2 quad 2.6ghz
3 sticks of corsair 1 gb rams (800 mhz i dunno what this means)
corsair hx520 power supply

[The Wise Monkey]

It does sound like a problem with the motherboard, so it might be worth trying a replacement.

[foreverviet88]

im gonna replace the motherboard and i was thinking should i stick with the same one or should i get something else
i want it to run games smooth
was thinking about putting in another geforce 8800 gt
but do i need to do anything special ? or just plug it in
ive never done the 2 graphic card thing before
and would i need to upgrade my power supply to handle 2 cards?

[The Wise Monkey]

Its a good motherboard, so there is nothing wrong with staying with the same model, but you might want to consider upgrading to a newer chipset e.g. P45 or X48 if you can afford it.

One 8800GT will run most games very smoothly, but you can set up SLI if you want. Your PSU will handle it as long as your are not using lots of hard drives and optical drives at the same time.

[foreverviet88]

whats SLi? and how do i do it

im using 1 cdrom drive and 1 harddrive btw
but the case i have has a 2 fans in the front and 1 giant fan on the top and 1 in the back

will it still be ok to use 2 graphic cards?

im not really sure what a chipset would look like
so if its not too much to ask for can u link me those 2 chipset u named ?

oh and btw im running windows xp
would vista improve gaming or should i stay with xp

[The Wise Monkey]

Your PSU should be fine to handle it - Corsair is a very good brand.

SLI is the method of running two or more nVidia graphics cards in parallel in order to increase graphics performance. Until very recently, this was only available on nVidia motherboards e.g. 6xx and 7xx chipsets. Make sure that you get exactly the same card that you already have - same brand and everything.

As for setting up a SLI system, nVidia themselves have a good guide:

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_howtobuild_1.html


However, I would recommend sorting your PC problems out first before considering a move to SLI.