hi guys, i'm having alot of trouble with a brand new motherboard...
i recently bought the m/board with a Cpu and a 1gb stick of ram,

Motherboard - MSI K9N6SGM-V (el cheapo)
CPU - Amd athlon 4800+ x2 (socket AM2 i'm assuming)
RAM - Elixer DDR2 PC-5300

The problem i'm facing, is that with just the barebones setup (RAM,CPU,M/Board,power..etc etc)
the Pc will only reach the POST occasionally,
i have noticed that on the ocassions that it doesn't reach POST the CPU fan will
actually slow down, it's hard to hear, but you can hear it, and it happens everytime the computer doesnt boot

on one ocassion it booted with the hardrive (IDE) and CD-rom drive plugged in, and i managed to insert an XP disc, but where it would normally say "press any key to boot..."
the screen just turned an almost dark greay/black colour and then the screen went on standby.

i'm just stumped, i've tried all the normal fixes, like removing the C-mos battery
and re-seating the motherboard, trying an alternative stick of ram, running it for a few seconds without the CPU fan (same problem..random boots)

i have a feeling i've cooked the board, and im hoping i havent done any damage to the CPU or ram,

any help would be great

alright, i may have solved this problem
i went out tonight and bought the same m/board again.
maybe not the smartest thing to do, but eh, it was $50AUD so it wasn't that bad,
got home, set it up making sure i didnt do any damage at all to this board,
and yet, same exact problem,
then i realised, that while it hardly ever reaches POST, if i remove the RAM, it still gives an error beep,
which lead me to examine the RAM,
on which i found a small dent on the connectors, where it had been chipped.
i now have a feeling that this is the cause of the failure of both setups,
going to try new ram tomorrow,
i'll get back on here if it works,
if not...
i'll find a bridge to jump off,
and i'll take my shitty computer with me

it's times like these you wish you had friends who
have boards that support DDR2, so you could test the faulty stick of RAM, instead of forking out more money to buy a new stick of ram, when the RAM might not even be the problem

I feel the pain. I'm doing the swap the parts dance myself on a Presario laptop that has some years on it but is still big enough to do what I need it to do. It's just this side of a dead unit. Only support I can give on your computer is plz forget the bridge (unless at some point the computer must make a solo journey for the sake of sanity).