Hello all PC gurus!
Pease help!
I have recently attempted to construct a PC based on an A8N mother board with an AMD 64 4000+ CPU, XFX 7800GTX GPU, 1Gb RAM, 80Gb SATA Hard Drive and a Sound blaster 24bit sound card. However when I came to power up the system I had some problems. first of all the system would not power up at all, then miraculously it powered up but was very unstable which caused problems when installing windows XP, so I decided to reinstall my old ATA hard drive which still had windows installed, however this proved fatal as the system never powered up again. The PSU I am using is a 500W 20 pin ATX 1.3 and according to the mother boards manual this should be sufficient, however I have heard rumours that a 24pin PSU is required regardless of what the manual states.
I have ordered an Antec SmartPower 2.0 400W PSU - Atx 2.01 Dual Rails and would like to know if this will solve the problem and if not what will?!

Thanks, Ben

Hello and welcome to PCHF ben124

I do not think that the power supply is the issue here but I am sure someone else can confirm this, in the meantime I recommend you try the following:

• Make sure you only have the basics connected, so remove you soundcard and any other add on cards. If you have an onboard VGA then use it.
• Make sure you connect the 4-pin ATX 12V Power connector to the motherboard.
• Make sure all your fans are working and that the Heatsink is firmly attached to the CPU.
• Reset your BIOS to its default settings.
• Try doing all this with your 80Gb SATA Hard Drive connected, not the ATA drive.

Would also be helpful if you explained your PC knowledge so that we know what you can and cannot do.

Hi and thanks for the welcome

Would also be helpful if you explained your PC knowledge so that we know what you can and cannot do.

I have a basic knowledge of PCs and I have successfully built systems before but I am by no means an expert, which is why I need your help! :cry:

I have tried to power the mother board without any additional cards connected (it has onboard sound but not VGA) and it still does not power up, I also reset the bios which made no difference and my 24pin PSU has not arrived yet so I cant try it out. Also the fans are fine as when the system did power up, before I tried to replace my ATA hard drive, they where running.