Computer problems
 

Hello everyone, I think some of you are pretty good with computers. My brother's computer is acting up. It powers up, but there seems to be no signal going to the monitor. When we unplug the monitor, it brings up the 'no source detected' message, or something to that effect, so I believe the monitor is good. Everything seems to power up, so my next guess would be the graphics card? I believe it's a 6600gt. There is no VGA socket on the motherboard, so I am assuming there are no onboard graphics on this board, but I could be wrong.

Problem is, I don't have any extra AGP graphics cards laying around (can't find my box of extra stuff). I'm not very good at diagnosing these problems, so I look to you guys for some advice. I'd rather not have to take it to someone, but what else should I do?

I would say its the graphics card. This just happened to me several weeks ago. It was more noticeable on mine because the fan on the graphics card quit working and the computer was very quiet.

The fan still spins on the card, so I don't know. I'm sure it could still be dead. I know I have an old one somewhere, but it's been years since I've seen it.

If there is no signal to the monitor I think it must be the card. Hook the monitor up to another computer to make sure it still works.

I just now realized that my laptop has a vga output. :rolleyes:

Yep, check monitor, then graphics card.

Power supplies have also been known to take out entire MB subsystems when their caps fail. What kind of system is it? home brew, name brand, or low end brand?

It's a homebrew, I built it a few years back, so I don't quite remember what's in it.

I had one of the supplies in the power supply fail causing the power hungry video card to not power up...

Lame. Easy fix though. :)