My oldest son bought his brother a new gaming PC.
It arrived yesterday, and he plugged it in and nothing on the monitors at his place.
That was with CRTs.

He brought it over there and hooked it up to my spare LCD, nada.

The PC fires up, the video card, RAM, everything else seems to be seated.
And of course the outfit is closed for the weekend.

Fans light up, lights, you name it.
This is a head scratcher.
Anyone seen a scenario like this?
It was suppose to be loaded with Vista Home and other software from the company.

I would have preferred to have built him one, but my oldest son wanted to buy this for him.

He will call up the place on Monday and see if they will send a tech to his place, or if he has to ship it back.
He is pretty upset that it is DOA, and has held my PC captive all weekend as he had a tournament to play in today.

 

how many sticks of ram in there? take out both sticks, then fire it up, then turn it off, put one stick in, and fire it up. it should fire up. it sounds like a bad ram stick to me... when i built my first computer, i burned up a ram stick, didnt know it. put it in a new motherboard, nothing. took out the ram, put in new ram, booted right up. so it might very well be your ram.

 

if it wasnt gonna be used for games id suggest what everyone should do is go mac and dont look back....

are you getting any beeps???
power supply fan kicking in? does it sound like its botting or just sound like its on?

 

Anything could be wrong really.

But you say it is getting power to everything.

Is the fan on the video card spinning? If it is try a different one (ONLY IF IT IS THE SAME FORMAT EG: PCI Xpress 16x) If it isn't take it out, (after unplugging, then pressing power switch to drain all excess power) IF that still doesn't work just take it right back.

No offense (it wasn't your decision) but ALWAYS build your own. Quality components, limitless options, no crapware, plus the pride of building it yourself. Make sure that he does not pay for the tech, or shipping. It is 100% not his fault. I would try all the ports on the video card, VGA or DVI or even S-Video if it has it. MAke sure that they are snugly fit in there too, some are quirky like that.

If it is only Home Basic, it will SUCK, Vista Home Premium is the minimum, preferably XP Pro.

After you get it running uninstall all the crapware, including ALL AV, and install either AVG or Avast! both are free and both work a hell of alot better than Norton or McAfee.

Why do I know all this? Because I build and repair computers for a living.

 

Thanks for the tips,
After he gets up and it is lighter out, we will look at it some more.
Also I remembered it made a system beep, I will have to fire it up, listen for the beep, then look in the EVGA mama board book.

Again, not the way I would have built it.
I only use XP Pro for gaming rigs, and Asus mamaboards.

This came from IBuyPower.com, not my choice.

It has Vista Home Premium I believe.
Also it has two EVGA 9800 1 GB cards in SLI mode, 4 GB of system RAM, 500 GB Sata II hard drive, ect.
Its main purpose is to shred games, but will also be used for working with.

It is all covered under warranty though, just a hassle to deal with.
I told him when he contacts them on Monday to see if he has a maintenance plan on it where a tech can come look at it too.

Yes, I would have preferred to have gone to the mom and pop shop where I got all of my stuff from for my gaming rig I built over Christmas break.

 

I'd try the RAM also. And you choose well Corey, XP is the best, better than MAC or Vista. maybe when mac sells more than 500,000 units they will build some better units. If that does not work, let me know, i got a few friends who are computer nerds.

 

We checked all cables, all are connected.
However...yesterday both DVD drives power cables were not connected.

Something tells me they rushed this out the door.
He did not even get any manuals with it such as for the motherboard, sound/video cards, ect.

Like I mentioned, I would never have bought one premade, but it was a gift from the oldest son to him.
We will get it straightened out.

He was all excited about getting it updated, then loading up Age Of Conan.
That game by the way blows World Of Warcraft away.
Much better graphics.

 

Did you pull the ram?

 

Yep, and the vid cards too.
Screen is blank, not even the BIOS screen will come up.

Get one long system beep at the start, but without knowing what BIOS is on the board, I can not diagnose what the beep entails.

 

-1 long beep... thats an issue with the chipset, if i remember ITT-TECH correctly. and yes corey, World of Warcraft sucks! my little sister AND dad play it. whats the point of that damn game anyway? its stupid.

 

One long beep could be a few, it usually is a RAM issue.

Honestly, instead of fooling with it you'll just have to deal with ibuypower.

 

If I had the time, I may have played WOW.
But since I do not, I enjoy FPS games like the Unreal Tournamnet series.
I can jump onto a server, kick some live butt, then exit and go about my other stuff in life.
The MMO (masive multiplayer online) games take more dedication, but can be a lot of fun.
Yeah, he has had the RAM out twice.
Something is fishy though since the DVD players had the power plugs disconnected.

 

Here is what his PC looks like, same case.
http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/c...r.aspx?mid=279



He got it going, for a few minutes.
Before calling them today he pulled it apart again, and the video cards (two in SLI mode go into one PCI Xpress slot) did not seem seated quite right.
He bent one of the tabs on the graphic card, and was able to seat it in all the way.

Fired it up, and he had text on the screen from the boot up, and it came into Windows.
But as soon as he slid it under the desk, it crapped out again.

He called them up, and they set up with UPS to pick it up tomorrow to fix it.
He asked about a tech coming over to fix it, no dice.

He will be giving them a very bad review for sure over on Gaming Spot.

So now with shipping, fixing it, and getting it back to him again, it will more than likely be another two weeks or more.
I would avoid buying from ibuypower.

 

damn Corey the next time you need a pc build ask me. for 2500 i would at lease made sure the thing posted when shipped

 

I know Bud, I had zero control over this.
My oldest son who is serving in Iraq wanted to do this for his brother.

I was against it, as I do not like store built PCs, I build my own, with the exception of laptops.
I did buy my laptop from Dell at the same time I built mine over the winter break.

 

well hopefully it gets worked out. i'm about to get another 8800gt for sli since they are about $160 on newegg.

 

did you guys get this thing figured out?

 

He called them up Friday, and it was received, but the dillweed he spoke with would not give him any info.

I so wish he would have let me build one from parts from the shop where I got mine.
Granted my older son spent way more on this than I would have, IMO, SLI is not really needed for games, a good 8800 GTS with 512 MB will play about any game out there.
That is the card I have in mine.

He will call again for an update this week.
Yes, I would never have boughten this from ibuypower.

 

Update:

The PC arrived again at my son's home Wednesday.
DOA again.
The video cards do not stay mounted in securaly to the motherboard.

Steer clear of ibuypower, they do not know how to build a gaming rig.
This thing was speced out to smoke any game on the planet, and they can not even mount in the video cards correctly.

He will be sending it back and seeking a full refund.

Meanwhile, he had his eye on the Goliath from the same store where I built mine from.
http://www.infotechnow.com/product_i...oducts_id=5699

Now I gotta talk him out of that one.
AMD is not the way to go right now for gaming.
Intel duo core with either two or four cores is what all the mags are recommending to go with.

I would just build him one, but it is my older son who is buying this as a gift for his brother as explained earlier.

That Goliath one has the same case I do though, the Antec 900 Gamer.
Great case, and dead quiet with its huge fans.

 

Corey, if you need a PC let me know and I can tell you what the latest and greatest is. Check the main section of where this thread is posted for a PC build example titled "PC Gaming Box"