i agree Stods but it's a fair risk cost wise. at least i can swap between two rigs knowing that the piece i put in worked in this rig.

it's on the desk right next to me at the moment. all connected outside the case...guess what...it still doesn't bleeding work

i'm off to bed before i lose my temper and regret it.

i'll just post this incase it ever helps anybody else.

i found out this morning what was wrong.

the very 1st thing i actually did with it was to take the graphics card out and put it into this machine, it worked perfectly so i knew it wasn't that. the stupid part was, because i had proved the graphics card was working i didn't put the card from this rig into the faulty one.

having tried everything i could think of and all suggested on here i sat with it in bits on the desk. powered it up with bare essentials. same problem. just before i launched it into the garden i thought i would give it one more try and systematically go through the whole process again from scratch.

i took my graphics card again and put it in this rig..........

OMG!!!! it didn't work this time

pulling and pushing and pressing it came on, i have a dry joint on the pcb output. bloody intermittent fault, no wonder i missed it.

lesson to learn, try everything twice.

glad your sorted anyway
i was losing sleep over it as well as you ,been in the same situation umpteen times and i know how frustrating it is

Glad you got it sorted! Irritating problem but cheep