I know the basics of how to do this because I have built one before; I am not asking how to do this from scratch.
Someone was about to throw away a motherboard and videocard thinking that they were broken. He said all that happened was that wierd ascii charactors would appear across the black screen when it was booting up. He gave them to me for free but he kept everything else but these two parts.
I only need a few more pieces to get it up and running they are: AMD64 cpu, RAM, and A strong Power supply unit. I have all the rest such as hardrives and monitor.
The strong power supply unit is only $20. The CPU and RAM are $50-60 each at the cheapest.
My questions are: Will I be able to see if the motherboard works once I buy the power supply unit without the cpu and memory? Will I be able to see the boot up screen and acces the bios? (or CMOS? or whatever its called)
I do not really want to risk spending a lot of money on this project if the motehrboard is broken. Thank you for any help.