2 year old PC no longer booting.

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chrisbradshaw

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Dec 31, 2014
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I built this PC in early 2014 and it's been completely fine ever since (it was my first build and I'm rather attached to it). I've just got home from university and it's been sitting here at home for the past few months untouched. I went to switch it on for the first time since then and the fans started and the light on the water cooler lit up briefly and then stopped. If left plugged in it would keep doing this.

I unplugged USB and display adaptor and tried again and still nothing. (I tried this several times and one of these attempts worked, the light on the H80i changed colour to green so it must have made it past post, but there was no video output when I connected the DVI cable). Interestingly the period for which the fans spin is shortened by connecting more devices, e.g. mouse, keyboard, headset which makes me think it is a power delivery issue causing there to not be enough current to boot. I've also disconnected my SSD and both HDDs and removed the video card and still nothing.

Any ideas? At the moment all I can think of is a new PSU or a new motherboard, both of which I'd rather avoid as I'm not exactly rolling in cash right now.

Thanks in advance everyone!

P.S. it probably won't help but it's a Z87 asrock board with an i5 4670k stock, and a 750W Cooler Master power supply (not great but it's served me well)
 
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thx1138v2

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Jun 18, 2011
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It could have collected quite a bit of dust while sitting undisturbed for an extended period. Take it all apart, clean all the pieces, and reassemble it. It probably would also help to get a canned air canister and blow out the PSU if you don't want to take it apart to clean it.

Double check everything is seated properly, fire it up again, and let us know the results.
 
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chrisbradshaw

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Dec 31, 2014
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If it was dust wouldn't it boot first and stop working from a thermal cutout? I'm going to go clean it now because it's long overdue a clean but I would think it would be a less sudden cutout if it was just from collecting dust.
 
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thx1138v2

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Jun 18, 2011
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A lot can go wrong with a PSU besides being "dead" or non-functional. Many run self tests and monitoring and will shut themselves down if their output voltages go out of specification or if they overheat. So it can try to start up, find something wrong, and shut itself down instead of frying your other components.

Start with the cleaned up machine and work from there. I can't count the times I've simply cleaned everything and re-seated all the plugs and cards and a machine boots right up even after not finding anything wrong. Be sure to check you standoff screws on the motherboard also to ensure you have good grounding.

I usually go about it like building a new machine. Do a minimal build (PSU, mobo, CPU, case, and case speaker), reset the BIOS defaults, and boot it to see if you get any BIOS beeps. If you don't get any beeps it's probably the PSU. To confirm that you can maybe borrow another PSU from a working machine and try it again. If you get beeps start adding components beginning with RAM and booting again after each part is added.
 
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chrisbradshaw

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Dec 31, 2014
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Disassembled it, cleaned everything and put it back together using an old 300 W PSU (so I didn't connect my 290x) and now the PC runs indefinitely but there is still no video output from the onboard graphics, which makes me think there is some problem with the motherboard too. Any idea?
 
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thx1138v2

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Jun 18, 2011
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Double check that the BIOS is set to use the on-board graphics and verify that the monitor still works.
 
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chrisbradshaw

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Dec 31, 2014
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No way of doing that seeing as the PC does not POST
 
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thx1138v2

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Jun 18, 2011
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You said it runs indefinitely on the 300W PSU. So reset the BIOS and it should boot to default settings which should be on-board graphics when no GPU is installed.

At the very least you've identified that the other PSU was bad and needs replacing since it boots with the 300W PSU.
 
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