Take your stuff back to the store, go on www.newegg.com or www.googlegear.com and buy a socket A mobo from either Abit (I use) or Asus and an AMD Athlon XP processor. You can get the XP2100 right now for $69.00.

That's about the best advice I can give since I haven't used a slot A processor in ages. I can tell you that you shouldn't be able to rock it from side to side if you have it in all the way.

With 3ghz processors out now, you're WAY behind in technology. Now, if you have something slower than a 1ghz processor and are upgrading, then I can see how it would seem a lot faster. The brand of mobo you have I have never heard of and I've been building my own pc's for 10 years. If it does have something to do with Gateway, there's a large part of the problem. OEM parts for the major comp manufacturers like Gateway are notoriously inferior. In the computer hardware industry more than anything else, you get what you pay for.

 

I'll try insulating it then...i'm not sure what i'll use, but i'll definetly try it in the morning. Its definetly odd, that the system works with the cpu out... but when i insert it, it dies. I've never seen anything like this before, and i've built about 6 systems over the years. I think i'll look into a new setup... as i'm getting sick of this... it'd be better than paying a bench fee etc etc etc to get this fixed. Time to hit the computer shop early monday morning.

 

Your motherboard sounds like an ATX board with a soft reset/power on which is set using the BIOS. A 400 watt power supply sounds almost like an AT/XT case and power supply to me.

Many AMD CPUs (and Intel too) have to have a "spec" power supply that applies a specific low steady voltage. Too much and the CPU will either overheat or die.

It is possible your motherboard has a fan speed and temp. monitoring feature and it is automatically shutting down the board/power supply to prevent CPU damage because it is not reading a proper CPU or case fan speed.

Last, but, not least is if you left the heatsink/fan off of the CPU/card even for < 60 seconds while booting the computer. There is a real chance you might have nuked the chip. I did that to an AMD KII before when I was in a rush building a system.

Most motherboards come with both BIOS and board settings via short blocks that determine CPu speed, chip speed, etc. The newer ram will self-register with the BIOS too.

It could be as simple as you attached the connectors for the switches, sensors, or fans reversed or out of line on the motherboard side of the connectors.

 

Thanks for the info guys, i got it working, turns out something was grounding to the case, i swapped some screws around and it works now without a hitch. Now onto modifying the case... if i've got the speed (sorta.) it needs to look good too.

 

yo,
ummm..send me some ice cream!...lol.......my guess was right!
my son assembled his latest pc last fall and was spastic when it didn't light off....so when he went out to rant and rave, i slid an insulator under the MB (it was stuck to the carton the MB came in).