power supply or graphics card?

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Hi all,

I have a pc here thats displaying "no signal" on its attached monitor. I have checked all the connections are good and tight and also tried it out with a second monitor and still no display so I have ruled it out as being the display at fault. When switching it on I get power lgiths up front, rear power supply spins, and cpu fan spins also. Not as great dela of sound from the hdd but i am unsure how noisey it was before the problem. Anyone any ideas how to limit it down further? also can anyone recommend a cheap tester graphics card to determine if the problem is with the card itself in future?

Kind regards all

 

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Does the mobo have an on-board graphics display port that you can connect to so you can bypass the graphics card?

 

Find your nearest Computer Exchange and pick up a cheap second hand card, swap it out and see if the new one works or not.

 

hey thanks for the quick replys guys, no unfortunetly no onbaord graphics on the thorugh the card , can it be any pci card? do pic graphics cards require drivers?

 

sorry my typing is terrible this evening

 

It depends how old the pc is, look on your motherboards website and it will tell you what cards you can use.
You can download any drivers you need.

 

Get a multimeter on the psu.

If the 12v rail is above or below 12v by 10% then your psu is fooked.

It would help if we know what were are dealing with i.e full specs including make and model of psu.

Have you cleaned out the dust from the pc latley? is the graphics card fan free of dust?

Have you tried reaseating the graphics card?

Sometimes the display can go dodgy with faulty ram. dowload memtest 86 burn to disk and with one dimm installed run memtest for several passes then swap dimms and reapeat.

 

thanks again for replys. its an FSP Group Inc power upply. I have reseated the card I can confirm its dust free also. what do you mean when you say 12v rail? The motherboard is an MSI N1996 board. Is there a kind of standard graphics card tht could be installed on the majority of baords , id like a card that a could take to jobs and text machines out without needing to worrie about drivers etc??? also out of curiousity how do you install drivers on a pc without being able to see any display?

thanks all

 

power supply model number =fsp350-60mdn rev A

 

Perhaps a silly question but how is he going to be able to see the results??

 

I meant if he reseated and got display then could run memtest.

Keith the 12v rail is what the psu uses to power most of the major stuff on your system, if you look in the bios (once you have a display) you will see various readings related to the psu such as 12v, 5v and 3.3 with 12v being the most important.

I should tell you since you have name the make that FSP power supplies are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. In laymans terms they suck big balls and are renowned for failing, they are also renowned for taking other pieces of hardware with them when they fail.

My suggestion would be to replace that psu even if it isn't the problem at this time because it will be in the future.

 

thanks bruce lee much appreciated can you recommend a cheap graphics card (pci) that i can use to test for faulty cards?

 

As I mentioned before just go to a second hand electronics store or failing that even somewhere like Maplins or eBuyer \ Ebay. You do need to make sure it's PCI rather than PCIE because PCI really is an old technology (after PCI came AGP, followed by PCIE).

 

What Simon said.

Never go cheap on power supplies though (unless its a special offer). A cheap power supply usually means its **** and cheap power supplies almost always cause you problems.

 

thanks to both of yous , i was looking at this card http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260686196294&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT id be using it just to test machines as i want to be able to quickly rule out if its a graphics card problem or not. would this do ok? also is x16 the most common sized pci slot on modernish mobo's?

 

Yep itll work.

Have you tried learing the cmos before you purchase to see if it helps?

 

Have you tried another monitor?

Do you get any beeps when you turn it on? if so how many?

You don't need drivers for the graphics card initially as it will function in VGA mode. This is like reduced functionality with less colour depth and without all the resolutions etc the card can support.