3-5 seconds boot and then off

Hello,

I have just built my own pc and have gone to power it on, the power comes on for about 3 - 5 seconds before it goes straight off again. After a few seconds (without user intervention) it tries to power on again and does this continuosly until intterupted.

I have tried taking out and returning the RAM,processor and graphics card with no success.

Does anyone know what it could be?

Its a core duo 2.4, Saphire 512 Radeon 1900XTX and 2GB of 800mhz Geil RAM.
the motherboard is Gigabyte GA_965P_DQ6.

any help would be greatly appreciated :)

power supply maybe? just a random idea

Ah crap, which version of BIOS did the board ship with? Did the box explicitly specify C2D compatible? Some old versions of BIOS do just this as they don't recongnise the CPU.

Another thing to try is popping out the CMOS battery for 15 seconds or so, then putting it back in. If i've set something wrong in the BIOS on my Gigabyte 965p S3 board (same series as the DQ6 i believe) it does exactly that.

You could also try booting with a different heatsink as it may be shorting somewhere. Also check you've plugged in all the rails needed form the PSU, especially if you've missed the additional 4pin rail to the motherboard next to the ZIF socket.

Hope this helps :)

Another thing, doesn't the X1900 require an additional power source? As in another connector form the PSU to the one near the top of the card? Not too sure, but i do recall them being extremely power hungry cards and as such require this extra power.

One more thing, the GEIL RAM, is it rated at above 1.8v ? The DS3 boards had problems with the RAM at above 1.8v booting, as long as you could get into the BIOS and change to whatever the RAM was rated at everything went smoothly. So, which model of RAM?

Hello,

Thanks for all the tips people but its me being a retard. I think it was dirty ram or graphics as we cleaned it and it worked. I also used the wrong screws in the motherboard so it wasnt quite flat, this could have been the issue.

The radeon 1900XTX required an extra PCIE powerconnector