Hey,
I've never built a PC before.. but have upgraded and know the basics.

I had two cases/systems and took the best from both to make the best of both worlds.. (I got this done at a shop).. now I want to use all the leftovers to make a system.

I've never done a CPU/fan and I got some thermal tape, or paper? weird stuff.. did what it said on instructions, put it onto the CPU then the fan/heatsink ontop.
Hooked up all the PSU cables needed, one harddrive and then tried to boot.

The first screen came up then a few seconds later the power goes straight off. I tried getting into the BIOS setup but still after a few seconds it goes off.

What could this be?
I don't want to have to take this to a shop and pay for probably one little issue to be fixed..

Asus P532-E SLI-PLUS motherboard
Dual core processor
2gb RAM

If you need more info to help me please ask!

Thanks
David

Hello,

I would look for a short.

I had this problem a while back. I have a tower PC on my floor with two USB plugs at the bottom of the case.

When I bent over to remove a thumb drive from a USB plug, I broke the thin piece of plastic separating the two USB plugs and bent some pins that then shorted against the case.

From then on, the PC would sometimes refuse to start. When I reached down to straighten up whatever I had bent, it would work again. For several months, I never realized that starting (or not starting) was related to bending or straightening the USB plug parts. I swapped parts around from about three computers and replaced every part in the PC (several hundred US dollars!) before I realized my problem. When there is a short or an overload like this, some motherboards shut the power down after 0.2 or 0.3 second (LEDs in fans "blip" on then go off). Other boards put a warning on the screen like "USB port overloaded, shutting down in X seconds" (and it counts down from 2 to 8 seconds or so).

(or your BIOS could be set up to shut down if it does not see an RPM signal from your CPU fan, as I think others are hinting at.)

Hope this helps.

EDIT: If you get some extra money, and you don't already have this feature, a tower case with USB plugs on the top is a real treat (and it will prevent the possibility of shorting in this way).

This post has been edited by Atreyu: Nov 14 2009, 04:30 PM