Screw this motherboard

[Rik Riorik]

I'm sitting here with all my parts and getting ready to fit the motherboard to the case. Spacers are in and fitted but I'm slightly uncertain as to which screws I'm supposed to use to screw the motherboard in place. When I look at the holes where the screws are to be fitted I see some metal bits that encircle the holes. Now I've got some screws which if screwed in will be touching those metal bits and then I've got some screws that if screwed in probably won't. Which ones should I fit? It doesn't look like those encircling metal bits are connected to anything else but what do I know.

For reference my mobo is a Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R, P35. Picture of which can be found here: https://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=335586

[Vid]

You will want to use the screws that will touch the metal on the mobo, after all the whole point is to hold the mobo in place. Screw them just tight enough so that the mobo doesn't move around once you have all the screws in, too tight and you may crack something. After all the screws are in check all your screws again and make sure the mobo is snuggly fit.

Also when I screw down a mobo I personally screw down the corners first then work my way in, but thats nothing more than a person preference.

[Rik Riorik]

You're quite certain? I'm afraid I'll mess something up if I do use the bigger screws. But then again it seems to me to be totally defying logic that Gigabyte would put those "shark tooth" metal bits that encircle the holes there in the first place if it would cause something serious to happen if a screw were to touch them.

[Ragenrok]

you want the screws to touch those mettle dots circling the holes. I believe thats how your mothboar dhelps groups itself from static or something lol. one way or another yes use the screws that touch.

[8igdave]

You should have some screws which go into the case which ahve a screw hole on top. Like another thread. Then your screws for your motherboard should screw into the tops of these. You want to use the screws which fit the tops of these, which will most probably be the ones touchign the motherboard rings. They will not short cirtuite the motherboard if tahts whart you think, but not using the spaces befoer hand would.

[Rik Riorik]

I've had my parts for some time now. But generally not having a lot of time on hand and not being overly savvy on these matters I have waited a while until I could find enough time so as to be able to act knowledgeably and be thorough in my work. Previously I had managed to connect everything to my case (mobo, proccessor and fan, graphics card, psu, memory, hard drive and optical reader but didn't connect any of the wires to the motherboard). But I didn't have the time to connect the wires so I left them for another day, which became today.

So today I've studied the manual and carefully connected all the different cables to where they need to go. But as I pushed the power button the only thing that happened was that the case's LED lights briefly lit up along with the power indicator before them dieing out well below a second after I've pushed the button (i.e. immediately).

Now the only thing I was somewhat perplexed by was how to connect my hard drive and Optical drive to the PSU and then to the motherboard itself. The way I did it I took the same cable that goes from the PSU and stuck two of the three connectors on it to the optical drive and hard drive respectively. Then I connected the jard drive to the SATAII0 and the optical drive to the SATAII1 with SATA data cables.

Now I really have no idea if that could explain the problem I'm having but I was a bit mystified as the manuals didn't really say if I could/should connect them as I did.

Anyone who has got an idea of what might be wrong?

[Nerror]

It could very well be a short circuit somewhere. The PSU is probably refusing to turn on because of it. The way you described the HD and DVD cabling sounds ok to me.

Make sure there's nothing that is short circuiting the mobo, like a cpu cooler backplate or thermal paste dropped outside the chip. Also check the RAM is properly socketed and such. It doesn't have to be on the mobo though. You can disconnect the HD and optical drive completely and try and boot the comp then.

And of course tripple-check that the lead from the powerbutton to the mobo is connected properly.

[Rik Riorik]

As far as I can tell there is nothing shorting circuiting the motherboard. I tried unplugging both the optical and hard drive but nothing happened. Everything is properly fixed in its positions and I've gone over the F_PANEL enough times to be supremely confident it is wired as it should be.

I really can't see where the problem is unless there is something wrong with my parts. But I just unplugged the main power connector from the PSU (the 24 pin one) and one of the holes in the connector doesn't contain wiring or a metal part. Does that sound right? Its not like the corresponding hole on the motherboard doesn't have a metal pin in it which suggests to me that something is missing.

Apart from that I have connected the front and back case fans to one of the PSU cables and then connected that one into my mobo's SYS_FAN2. The other two fans on the mobo SYS_FAN1 and PWR_FAN only had 3-pin connectors whereas the PSU cable only had a 4-pin connector which duly only corresponded to SYS_FAN2. No problem there right?

EDIT. Oh and when I tried to turn on the power I had the same problem as last time only this time something flashed briefly on the mobo, like it was fixed lights only from the area where it came from it doesn't seem there are any lights although there is something called PHASE_LED up there.

[Nerror]

What CPU do you have?
Do you have any other RAM sticks you can try with?

Just for the sake of elimination, unplug the fans too one by one.

[Rik Riorik]

My CPU is an E8400. About the RAM I have I think two really old 256MB ones instead of the two 2GB I bought this time around. They might work to use, don't know.

[Rik Riorik]

It doesn't work with both fans disconnected from the power or either one of them connected on their lonesomes. My old memory are two pairs of 256 DDRT400W. I have no idea what that is but it doesn't sound like DDR2 memory. They are of TwinMOS make*


*I have been really amazed by a lot of the stuff that was in my old PC. Never heard of most of it :) .

Oh, yes, could hte problem reside with the 24 pin main power connector (which is only a 23 pin connector as per an above post)?

[Nerror]

You know, I think it's the CPU the mobo doesn't recognise. You might have to pop in an old intel CPU to flash the bios. I have heard of that issue before where older mobos can't run the new E8000 series until they get that new bios.

Gigabyte will have the instructions, but without another CPU the mobo recognises yer out of luck until you can get your hands on one.

[8igdave]

doesn't it give you an error message somewhere like my abit has a little lcd or at least some beeps if it doesn't recognize the cpu?

[Rik Riorik]

It could be interesting to know that it wasn't the processor that was the problem. After having had little time to correct the problem and no real need to do so I finally decided this Friday that I couldn't be bothered having a non-functional computer anymore. So I opened the baby up, replaced the processor with another one I got. That wasn't the problem though so I sat down and had a really long and hard look at the wiring I had made.

After a while I found I had connected the PSU to the motherboard in a SYS_Fan position. At the time I thought it made sense but looking through the mobo guide I just couldn't see if it was right or not. So I pulled it and decided that I'd switch on the computer just to see if anything happened. It duly started xD.

So I had the comp built for about two and a half months before I finally corrected a silly little mistake. I now feel slightly stupid but happy enough that it more than makes up for any hightened levels of stupidity.

Bring on the WAR. I iz ready.

[Slerpy]

wow congrats man lol u had lots of problems :(

[Nerror]

After a while I found I had connected the PSU to the motherboard in a SYS_Fan position. At the time I thought it made sense but looking through the mobo guide I just couldn't see if it was right or not. So I pulled it and decided that I'd switch on the computer just to see if anything happened. It duly started xD.

Doh! Good to hear you got it started though.

I always religiously read the mobo manuals even when I am sure I know how to set it up. 10 minutes of reading can save a lot of silly mistakes like that. :)

[Rik Riorik]

I did spend a whole lot of time with the different guides though, it was my first time ever building though so I really had to go about it that way. If you lot knew the amount of time it took me to get my computer together and fitted in time actually spent working on it and reading about it you'd be quite amazed ;) .

Thanks for all the help, it was really appreciated.