Have been building a Shuttle system tonight, using the SN25 barebones case. Installed everything as usual, but the system won't even get to BIOS!! Everything whirrs into life but the screen stays in standby.

I took everything out, leaving RAM and CPU but still the same. Even took the RAM out but does the same - doesn't beep or anything which is usual when RAM isn't present.

I'm sure I had a similar issue building an Athlon64-based Shuttle at the start of the year, but I can't remember now.

I'm thinking it might be too much/too little thermal paste over the CPU die? From past builds I do find this a bit of a lottery, and there isn't much guidance on how much to apply. Have done it three times with this system tonight now, starting with a very thin layer and have added progressively over the following two attempts. No change though :(

Any advice? Anyone had similar with Athlon64s? Will have to pop it into my mate at the local PC shop tomorrow lunch otherwise.

Cheers,

Steve

Reset connector on the motherboard shorted out, perhaps connected something to it by mistake (50mm 8 ohm internal speaker say)?

Reset button on the PC's case stuck in/on?

RAM not in correct banks?

CPU not in the holder correctly?

CMOS reset 'enabled' - worth a check.

I doubt it's the amount of thermal grease - you'd get a boot screen followed by a turn-off in that case.

Does it have onboard gfx & an aftermarket one? If so, try using the onboard one first.

IDE lead the wrong way round can cause it if you have one that isn't keyed (but IIRC the ones Shuttle supplied are keyed, so that would surprise me)

I agree with WW_VRS, loads of mobos ship with the CMOS jumper left in the 'reset' position, it still catches me out occassionally

I'm with the CMOS thingy.

Failing that, if you have a very recent A64 core (dual core or san diego or you're putting in an opteron ), maybe the BIOS can't recognise it and refuses to boot. Do you have another A64 you can try ?

Thanks for the responses guys. Pinned it down to a faulty graphics card this evening. Pinched another PCI-E card from a work system and it's fine now. There's a CMOS clear button at the back of these boxes, so I did that at the same time as swapping the GFX card, just in case. I had actually tried that already last night but to no avail, so I'm thinking it was all down to the GFX card :thumbdwn:

And Xav, it's a 939-pin Venice core 3200, and it picks it up fine

Just transferring data across to it now, and my 'old' system is running like a dog while that's going on

Steve

Not that I'm jealous or anything but you lucky g*t - glad it's back up though, forgot about the new ones having that cmos reset button :(

I've got a few shuttles, one was a P3 based one, and that's pretty much dead now, then I've got two Athlon-series ones, 2600/2800 I think rated. Had one PSU fail on me but uprated to the supposed-to-be-silent-ones.

It's a nice machine you've got there for sure

Cheers, just spent today re-installed everything

It's amazing how many little useful apps and Windows tweaks you accumulate

Running along nicely now, and a decent speed increase to boot

And the battle to get a replacement card sorted too

Steve