Can a power supply mess up mobo's?

[Belgarrath]

I've put several systems together,and I've kinda' lost track of which components I put in which system, but I think I've had three systems(mobo's) come down with the same symptoms....

Pressing the power button starts all the fans,hard drive led lights for about 2 seconds, brief hard drive activity is heard, and then nothing. No other activity except fans. I'm stumped.

 

[edfair]

To the question, yes, power supply can mess up a M/B. But it is unlikely given the circumstances you describe. Pull everything off the M/B and P/S that can be pulled and still allow the M/B to process and give a display. Then start the troubleshooting as a dead system. You're looking for a video splash screen at the start.
Without knowing what is in them, I'd try substitutions on the video, ram, processor, P/S, M/B in that order. But I would also look at the address lines with a logic probe to see if the processor is clocking.
The symptoms are of a processor not clocking so never getting to BIOS. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[ceh4702]

Maybe you are getting a sub-standard power supply. Before a power supply goes bad it may run and make power, just not enough to run the processor.

Some motherboards have some safety features that makes them not start if something isnt working. Like the processor doesnt work or it gets real hot at startup or maybe the memory isnt any good. Usually you would get a message or some beeps to that though. Usually if you set them to jumper free mode they will start up at the safest default setting. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[stuartd]

Are you building high spec machines which require a more powerful PSU than you are using?

 

[Belgarrath]

No. The power supply is 250 watts and the cpu is an AMD k6-2 350mhz. The thing is, this the third MB I've installed into this case/psu that has quit working. I kept thinking it was a video card problem until this last board, which has video built in.