Harware issue. No post after video card install

[mrkubanftw]

Hey guys, i havent posted much, and i didnt see a Troubleshooting subforum anywhere. So sorry if this is not in the correct sub.

Heres my issue anyway. Totally puzzled. This is my friends pc that im trying to troubleshoot 3 states away, for the record.

He has a A8 System with a ecs a75f2-m2 motherboard. He is unsure of the ram and exact processor model. It had a poor 6000 series AMD video card. I know.

This system had been previously working fine.

I sent him a 5870 ATI card to bump up his fps a bit in games. So he installs it and everything was working fine for a bit, after trying a few games i was told the fps was very poor (around 60 or so in a game i know it should be hitting 200 on all day). So i told him to uninstall whatever drivers he was using and try official drivers from AMD's website. So he uninstalled the old driver restarted and poof no video. Not even a post screen?

He calls me and tells me he forgot to install one of the (2) 6-pin power connectors to the vid card. So he plugs the second one in, still no video. I thought he possibly fried the power supply since it was a ****ty 400 watt dual 12v rail psu. So sent him a brand new GX650. I own one, iv ran crossfire 7950's with no issues on the damn thing with a fx8350. Tried that, still no video.

Now i had him reset cmos via the jumper. This availed no result as well. Occasionally after resetting the jumper (hes tried it many times), he can get a post screen to pop up, but he gets a "CMOS Settings Wrong" error. I suspected a bad battery? So i had him replace the battery and now he cant even get back to the post screen. Heres the thing. It does have onboard video. But seeing as how the system will occasionally show the post screen, with the video card.. i doubt its stuck set to onboard vid? Hes attempting to get a hold of a dvi cable so we can verify that there is no video coming from the on-board.

I guess my main question at this point, having already tested two different power supplies, a new mobo battery, and two different video cards, Could the lack of 6-pin caused a power overload on the motherboard and toasted something? Since he ran a few games for a couple hours likely? It just seems so unlikely to me?

Any response appreciated at this point, ill even take some constructive criticism i don't care.

 

[kyij]

Since it is an A8 system there is no reason there should not be onboard video, and it "always" is activated unless you manually turn it off.

I would take out the card, do a hard reset with CMOS and try to restart w/o video card.
If nothing, try it w/o ram and see if you can any beeps. If it beeps, put one stick in, so it can complain about the system ram changing.

I am sure it complained about the CMOS since you had him remove it, the system clock reset, and that is why it complained/ told you to check it.

Just because a gpu has 2 6pin adapter, does not persay it needs them both, but it is a good idea to pull from two seperate rails so it does not burn of the PSU's cords due to too much Ampre across line.

A way to test a atx power supply is to short the green (fan) wire and gnd. If it spins, it should be working, google this if you have not heard of it.. easier than shipping psu. Or you could have had him got a $3 tester, again cheaper then shipping a psu, but sometimes the tests could give false positives, but 9.5/10, they won't.

As fyi, it is bad idea to tell a person that does not know what they are doing to uninstall drivers. Though this should not cause it not to boot - can he hear any sounds like windows login if it posts? Have him try his old video card too.

 

[mrkubanftw]

Since it is an A8 system there is no reason there should not be onboard video, and it "always" is activated unless you manually turn it off.

I would take out the card, do a hard reset with CMOS and try to restart w/o video card.
If nothing, try it w/o ram and see if you can any beeps. If it beeps, put one stick in, so it can complain about the system ram changing.

I am sure it complained about the CMOS since you had him remove it, the system clock reset, and that is why it complained/ told you to check it.

Just because a gpu has 2 6pin adapter, does not persay it needs them both, but it is a good idea to pull from two seperate rails so it does not burn of the PSU's cords due to too much Ampre across line.

A way to test a atx power supply is to short the green (fan) wire and gnd. If it spins, it should be working, google this if you have not heard of it.. easier than shipping psu. Or you could have had him got a $3 tester, again cheaper then shipping a psu, but sometimes the tests could give false positives, but 9.5/10, they won't.

As fyi, it is bad idea to tell a person that does not know what they are doing to uninstall drivers. Though this should not cause it not to boot - can he hear any sounds like windows login if it posts? Have him try his old video card too.

The PSU I sent him has a single 12v rail so that's a non issue at this point. I had him remove one stick today and try that but still no post screen. It does has onboard video however though he doesn't have a dvi cable and his monitor doesn't have VGA. Currently I'm having him acquire a dvi cable to test the onboard as I'm almost certain it's just defaulting to onboard. What's odd is that occasionally he was getting video from the card.

Can you confirm my assumption of this causing virtually no hardware damage?

My friend is more than competent enough to reinstall simple drivers... Or so I thought -_-