New machine build problems

After a year of looking, finally found a new limit switch for my Bridgeport. Installed it, cranked up the mill, and the PC is stone cold dead.

Ordered a new case, motherboard (GA-H61M-S2PV), processor, memory, and an extra parallel port card. Turns out the case is "low profile", so it needs the extra parallel port card to be low profile. Got another on order, but it seems to be coming on a slow boat from China. Darn.

Went ahead and built everything tonight using the tall card, but wanted to add an internal speaker, but the speaker I had on hand was not plug compatible. ( Will these small aggravations never cease?)

Hooked everything up, powered it up and no output to the video at all. The internal fans come on for about two minutes and the power light on the front of the machine comes on. After about a minute or two, the fans and light go out, it waits about ten seconds and repeats the process.

Changed the hard drive to a known good hard drive from a known good machine. No change.

Added a CD-Rom with a LIVE CD in it, no change.

Changed the SATA cords around to different SATA connectors on the board. No change.

Now the only idea I've got left is that perhaps the memory chip (Kingston) is bad, and I don't have any spares.

Anyone else got any lights flashing in their brains about what is going on?

Is there a web site with a step by step checklist for troubleshooting a computer?

Thanks

Tom

Hi

If you get no output at all, it is nothing to do with the HDD, it is well before that.

You should get a BIOS screen first, even if it then tries to boot and cannot find an operating system etc.

The bad memory stick idea could be correct.
Either it is in the wrong slot, is not compatible with the motherboard or is U/S. Either way it could prevent any sort of boot.

A similar thing happened to me in the past and when I tried removing one of the sticks it then booted up.
However I did get an visual output, albeit just random lines. But if I only had 1 stick in it and that was u/s, I might have got nothing.

Other thing to check is that it has a good coin cell battery in the motherboard holder.
If it was completely missing this might have this effect, albeit most will boot to the BIOS defaults and any changes are not saved if the battery is flat / missing.

Got to be as good a place to start as any

regards