Old gaming system, possibly a video issue

[Liquid Flames]

• Describe the problem you are having in detail but without rambling:
  • This machine worked fine about a month ago. I moved to a new apartment and it's been sitting since the move. I just tried to power it up and I get no video. I push the power button on the tower and all the fans spin up, all the lights come on including the power light on the mbd and the power lights inside the two video cards. I never hear a post beep but I *think* I may have disabled the audible beep sound in the BIOS/enabled silent boot. The fans are all spinning at full speed and not spinning down to lower speeds like they usually do after post.
  • What I've tried: reseating everything including the video cards, RAM, and all cables and wires. I have not messed with the CPU at all. It's got two video cards so I've tried swapping them, tried it with just one card, then swapping to the other, and then tried them both in both PCI slots. I also tried two different monitors and two different video cables to make sure. So maybe it isn't really a video issue and something else is wrong. 
• Include your operating system including version and 32/64 bit.
  • Windows 10 64 bit but I can't even get to windows right now
• Include your entire system specs, including the wattage of your PSU.
  • Yes, I know this is an old system and BFG isn't even around anymore but it's all I've got so if I can fix it I'll have a PC again.
    • Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard
    • Two BFG GTX 280 video cards in SLI
    • 32 gbs of OCZ RAM
    • Corsair HX1000, 1000 watt power supply
    • Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 3ghz quad core
• Tell us which BIOS version you have. Some problems can be fixed by updating to the latest BIOS, so check that there are no updates available
  • I don't know and I can't check because I can't get any video
• Include any software running when it crashes (if applicable)
  • n/a
• Give full details of any error messages and screenshots if possible
  • When I power it on, the monitor comes on and says "DVI NO SIGNAL" and then the monitor powers itself off while the pc stays on and all the fans spin at full speed
  • The odd thing is that these two video cards have a green light on the inside when it powers on to tell me it has power. I forgot to plug the two power cables back into them one time after reseating them and powered the PC on and that light inside the video cards were red to indicate I forgot to plug them in. So I shut the PC down again a plugged the power into both cards, turn the PC back on again and the lights inside the video card were green again. So I have a hard time thinking the video cards have both gone bad at the same time. I've moved the DVI cable to all 4 ports between the two cards. I'm stumped. 
• Thanks in advance for the help.

[LabRat]

plug the monitor into the right connection in the right card.

pull side and check ALL connections for an improperly set plug. ( pull and re-seat connections )

[Liquid Flames]

14 minutes ago, LabRat said:

plug the monitor into the right connection in the right card.

pull side and check ALL connections for an improperly set plug. ( pull and re-seat connections )

Thanks for the reply LabRat. I've tried that several times already. Everything's plugged in nice and snug, as mentioned in the OP, I've reseated everything several times, and I've tried all 4 DVI ports on the video cards. It shouldn't really matter which DVI port I use but I have tried them all.

[LabRat]

try pulling one 0f the cards from the machine and giving it a go.

[Liquid Flames]

1 minute ago, LabRat said:

try pulling one 0f the cards from the machine and giving it a go.

I did that too.. again.. as stated in the original post. I tried each card, one at a time in each slot one at a time, tried two different monitors and two different DVI cables. Are you sure you aren't just posting for postings sake to get your post count up?

[LabRat]

also, I remember those boards. you're lucky to have one that ran for so long. the early ones had some issues. not uncommon for a board to go bad. a bad or bulging cap. or an electrical issue from anywhere.

[LabRat]

1 minute ago, Liquid Flames said:

I did that too.. again.. as stated in the original post. I tried each card, one at a time in each slot one at a time, tried two different monitors and two different DVI cables. Are you sure you aren't just posting for postings sake to get your post count up?

i don't do that stupid shit.

I try to think about past issues with particular hardware and just keep plugging away.

and yes, i do miss stuff from time to time when I read. we both will have to get over that. dyslexia is a bitch.

[Liquid Flames]

32 minutes ago, LabRat said:

i don't do that stupid shit.

I try to think about past issues with particular hardware and just keep plugging away.

and yes, i do miss stuff from time to time when I read. we both will have to get over that. dyslexia is a bitch.

No worries, sir. I was mostly joking. I appreciate the ideas. I really hope it isn't the motherboard. I can't afford a new pc right now. If anyone else has any other ideas...? I was thinking.. isn't there a way to reset the bios to default using jumpers or something?

[LabRat]

 yes, look in the booklet that came with the board or seek out the pdf from asus' site. some people just remove and replace the battery. I'm not that lazy. ( cmos reset ).

since you don't have anything to do................ did you think of completely disassembling, cleaning up and reinstalling everything?

did you think of bread-boarding?

do you have another HD you caN USE?

DID YOU THINK OF JUST REMOVING THE hd ( all drives )and booting?

looking back............ pull all the ram and install 1 stick in the nearest slot to the cpu.. or was it the farthest......... time weighs heavy........... there used to be an issue there. you might want to try that/

sorry for the caps button lock.

 

[Liquid Flames]

13 minutes ago, LabRat said:

 yes, look in the booklet that came with the board or seek out the pdf from asus' site. some people just remove and replace the battery. I'm not that lazy. ( cmos reset ).

since you don't have anything to do................ did you think of completely disassembling, cleaning up and reinstalling everything?

did you think of bread-boarding?

do you have another HD you caN USE?

DID YOU THINK OF JUST REMOVING THE hd ( all drives )and booting?

looking back............ pull all the ram and install 1 stick in the nearest slot to the cpu.. or was it the farthest......... time weighs heavy........... there used to be an issue there. you might want to try that/

sorry for the caps button lock.

 

Yeah I'm going to tear it completely down and clean it real good tomorrow. I'm going to try resetting the BIOS.

 

The RAM - I tried pulling it all out and just turning it on with no RAM to see if I could get it to beep with an error code and I got no beeps. It does the same thing with no ram installed - all the fans spin at max speed and that's it.

 

So, you might be right about the motherboard has gone bad but I'll try tearing it down tomorrow. 

 

Thanks again. I'll post again when I've done all that.

[LabRat]

but please do try that 1stick of ram thing. early on there was some kind of idiotic problem associated with that.

do bread board before reinstalling in case.

[redteam4ever]

If the suggested solutions don't work, try taking out all the RAM and boot. You should get one continuous beep followed by two short beeps then a pause (repeated) (this is from the manual) for missing memory. You mentioned silent boot - manual says nothing about beep codes, silent mode hides information about connected drives during startup. (I would copy the exact formulation but Asus copy protected the manual and I'm too lazy) Also on successful POST you should get one short beep according to the manual.

Once I needed to test a motherboard that I suspected to be dead - after I pushed the power button, the fans and HDD started spinning, no HDD activity light, no video output, no beeps, nothing. I took out the RAM, no beeps. Dead board. Also, it could have been a dead CPU, but I wasn't able to get another one for testing. It was an old PC, I took out the hard drive and put it to the PC that had damaged HDD. That's how you repair PCs at school.

[Liquid Flames]

8 hours ago, redteam4ever said:

If the suggested solutions don't work, try taking out all the RAM and boot. You should get one continuous beep followed by two short beeps then a pause (repeated) (this is from the manual) for missing memory. You mentioned silent boot - manual says nothing about beep codes, silent mode hides information about connected drives during startup. (I would copy the exact formulation but Asus copy protected the manual and I'm too lazy) Also on successful POST you should get one short beep according to the manual.

Once I needed to test a motherboard that I suspected to be dead - after I pushed the power button, the fans and HDD started spinning, no HDD activity light, no video output, no beeps, nothing. I took out the RAM, no beeps. Dead board. Also, it could have been a dead CPU, but I wasn't able to get another one for testing. It was an old PC, I took out the hard drive and put it to the PC that had damaged HDD. That's how you repair PCs at school.

Thanks for the reply, Red. I did already try taking out all the RAM as stated in a previous post. I got no beeps at all. I can hear the hard drives spin up and start clicking but I didn't check for activity lights. Nothing I do seems to change the behavior of this computer. I can take out all the video cards, RAM, and hard drives. I can put them back in any combination. I did this systematically keeping track of each stick of RAM and each card, and each hard drive, trying them all one at a time and then in combinations, I tried one stick of RAM in the slot nearest the CPU as suggested by LabRat. Nothing seems to make it do anything different. I don't think it's POSTing at all. I think the board is shot. I am shopping for a replacement but because it's so old they're pretty expensive. I found one on eBay and I have a bid in for $50 which is the high bid right now but it still has about a day left. We'll see. I'll let you guys know how it turns out ultimately. Thank you again for the suggestions.