I built a new comp specs are amd athlon x2 5000+ Black Edition, 2 Gigs OCZ platinum RAM, Antec 900 Gaming Case 500 watt power supply Nvidia 8500GT gfx card, 300 Gig Seagate Barracuda SATA drive and the Mobo is ABIT KN9 SLI NVIDIA Socket AM2 (940) ATX Motherboard.

The new build worked fine for a week and then i installed the new HD and restarted and no picture would display on the monitor. The HD is fine its in this computer I'm on now. The graphics card is fine because it works in the computer I'm on now and I checked both of the video card(PCI-E slots). The computer does turn on and I believe it boots but there is no picture displayed. I have reseated all components and checked the RAM sticks and they are good. Could I be a victim of a short or even ESD and what could the causes be?

Obvious question, but did you plug the graphics card into the PSU power lead?

Generally the way to approach these problems is to take it a step at a time. Disconnect all non-essential hardware except the graphics card, then boot the PC. If it boots, turn off, connect the HD and boot again. If it boots, try the same with the DVD drive, etc. until you've located the weak spot.

If you can't even get it to boot, then removing the motherboard and PSU from the case, then setting it up on a non-conductive surface (such as the cardboard box it came in ) and turning it on (use a screwdriver to momentarily short the on-switch connector on the board) is a good way to check that it's not shorting on anything.

plug a keyboard into it. when you press the num lock or caps lock keys do the keyboard lights go on and off? Easy check to see if the ram,processor and m/b are working.. If they don't then you have a problem at base level.

The graphics card is fine i'm sure because it worked before the problem occurred, I was able to use the computer then it just stopped after the restart, LCD searches for signal but cannot find one. I will have to take ur guys advice when I have a day where i can disconnect this computer and do all this to the other one, probable sunday night or something but I will respond back and keep checking with ur ideas because u guys are my last hope without spending some money to get this fixed.

have you tried the monitor on another computer? or another monitor?

is there a power connector on the graphics card? is it connected to the psu?

a 500w to power that power hungry cpu, hdd and gfx card? I'd go atleast 650 watt to be honest..

but when you say you believe the system boots, how do you know? do you hear the windows boot sounds??

a 500w to power that power hungry cpu, hdd and gfx card? I'd go atleast 650 watt to be honest..

but when you say you believe the system boots, how do you know? do you hear the windows boot sounds??

yes i had to buy a new PSU last Tuesday , my month old 550wts PSU simply packed up due to the power drain of my SLI setup. I had to get a 650wts and now works perfect.

symptoms for me were games crashed and PC turned off mid playing

what brand is your PSU? because some the cheaper ones say they are more powerful then what they really are. always get a desent brand

yeah, it could be a dodgy psu. if it is an sli setup with 2 graphics cards, it'll use a lot of power, a lot of cheaper power supplies say they are much more powerful than they are. the extra hd could easily have pushed it over.

but then it would probably either not boot, or it'd crash when your computer used too much power. it might even 'blow'. i'm not sure no graphics displayed on screen would be a likely symptom.

is it an antec psu as well as case? or a cheaper psu?

I had the same problem.
It turned out to be the DVI input on my monitor that was faulty.
As soon as I swapped to the VGA input, everything worked just fine.