What's the minimum barebones system to boot a motherboard?

Hello,

I have a latitude E4310 motherboard with integrated processor that I got for a little home project. I bought some memory for it, a CPU heatsink/fan, and attached it to a docking station. When I connect power to the docking station I see a blue led light up for a second, then the light turns off again. I press the power button on the docking station and I can see the fan spin for a few seconds, then it shuts down again. There are no noises or beeps (maybe it can't beep without a speaker). Am I missing something? Does it need to have a battery or anything else connected to boot up?

Thanks for any help

 

Maybe hard drive? Battery is not needed.

 

Thanks for the tip. I forgot to mention that I had a pendrive with a Linux distro plugged in the docking station. Would that be equivalent? Or do you think it requires a disk in the EIDE connector?

 

Well, usually, you'd get a no boot device detected message instead of the computer turning off. You may have to manually force the boot from the USB drive. Trying with a SATA drive connected isn't a bad idea though. Also, the blue light on the power supply turns off or the one on the dock?

I suppose you only have the laptop motherboard and nothing else? It is possible that it is looking for a keyboard or something like that. I've seen some Asus desktop mobos refusing to boot because a keyboard wasn't detected in the past.

 

There may be some kind of safety check. Not sure how it work, I have similar problem with my dell when it is half disassembled and it is not 1000%.

I would try power reset/cmos reset. Then let it run, sometimes it reboot itself after that shutdown.

Cpu+heatsink+board +ram should be enough to boot up.

 

If you can't get to the BIOS then I would suspect the RAM is either bad or not seated properly.

The BIOS needs to find the RAM in order to load itself properly. It does not need any storage drive.

John

 

For almost all Dells, you should be able to boot it with just the motherboard + CPU + GPU + RAM. In your case, the former 3 are integrated, so you should just need the RAM. If it's not working, it's probably indicative of a hardware issue.

 

Ok, thanks all for the responses. So far I have been able to confirm that attaching a USB keyboard doesn't make any difference. I'll try tomorrow with a different RAM module to see if that's the problem

Thanks!

 

Ok, this is driving my crazy. I have tried three different E4310 mobos (all are refurbished, supposedly in good working condition, from two different sellers), with heatsink/fan on, I tried several different memory modules, I tried with and without a USB keyboard connected. Again, it doesn't have a battery, HDD or native keyboard/trackpad. The result is always the same, the blue leds turn on, the fan starts spinning for a few seconds, then everything shuts down. I can feel that the CPU is a bit warm afterwards (but not terribly hot), proving that it did work for a little bit. Any ideas why it won't boot? I'd expect to at least get to the BIOS. I think it's highly unlikely that all three are bad.

Thanks!

 

I was wondering if this behavior could be explained by not having a TAA board? I just read something about it but I'm confused. What is a TAA board?