Dead Dell tower

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Uminume

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Jan 19, 2017
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I have a dell t1600 its an entry level server workstation . It has a zeon processor and 8 gbs of ecc memory no graphics card.

It doesn't power on now . I went through a process of diagnostics and found out that the PSU is dead . Swapped it and still no power. Now I only have the test PSU hooked to the motherboard with nothing attached to the motherboard other than cpu and cpu fan. And still doesn't power on. The only thing that happens is that when I hook the 24 pin cable to the motherboard the cpu fan spins for a second and stops again . It does that when I Unhook the cable too.
 
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R
Well, that narrows it down a bit. Since the PSU is known to be good - I'm leaning most likely to the motherboard being damaged when the PSU went out. I've fixed a few Dells that I picked up on eBay cheap - all of them had bad motherboards (but surprisingly, all good PSUs/CPUS/RAM/HDDs)- it seems to be a consistent theme.

Bad news is that it uses a 'Dell Proprietary Motherboard'. It looks though like it uses the standard mATX format, so you could find a motherboard compatible with the Xeon/RAM and it should fit. And you could get one that is probably quite a bit more reliable than Dell.
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Rookie_MIB

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Jul 27, 2013
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Might be a dumb question or two but lets ask anyhow:

1) Are you sure the other PSU is good?
2) Is the PSU you swapped it with definitely a compatible PSU (Dell sometimes does proprietary shit).
3) 'only thing connected to motherboard is PSU'. You didn't disconnect the front panel connector (ie: the power switch)?
4) In the process of the PSU going out - it could have taken the motherboard with it. Test with a known GOOD PSU.
 
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Uminume

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Jan 19, 2017
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Thank you for the tip on disconnecting power before connecting to motherboard, and no there is no beeping, I don't get to the point where the fans are even turning, to the point that am starting to question the power button itself or its connector.
 
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Uminume

Commendable
Jan 19, 2017
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1,510
@Rookie_MIB
Thank you for trying to help
1) the other PSU is brand new which I bought for this reason only and tried it on another motherboard before and it works just fine.

2)I was concerned about that till I read that if my board requires a propriety PSU, I would even be able to connect the regular PSU because the board would require different pin connector. ( maybe am wrong, also worth mentioning that the PSU is a Chinese knock off just meant for testing )

3)my front panel has 2 connectors one for all the USB sockets and another separate one for the power button, so I disconnected the one going to the USB sockets and left the power button connected.

4) That's the most probable scenario but I'm trying to confirm it, so I know which parts I need to buy, instead of buying parts and testing one by one. ( can't afford that )
 
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Rookie_MIB

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Jul 27, 2013
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Well, that narrows it down a bit. Since the PSU is known to be good - I'm leaning most likely to the motherboard being damaged when the PSU went out. I've fixed a few Dells that I picked up on eBay cheap - all of them had bad motherboards (but surprisingly, all good PSUs/CPUS/RAM/HDDs)- it seems to be a consistent theme.

Bad news is that it uses a 'Dell Proprietary Motherboard'. It looks though like it uses the standard mATX format, so you could find a motherboard compatible with the Xeon/RAM and it should fit. And you could get one that is probably quite a bit more reliable than Dell.
 
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