newly biult pc wont turn on

[gigman]

I just out together my biuld and installed vista and while getting drivers and such it radomly turned off like a power loss not shut down and then i started to smell somthing wierd and now nothing happens HELP

 

[Shadow703793]

Your PSU is dead. If you didn't go with a top tire PSU then now you are feeling the burn. Thats why you probably shouldn't skimp on the PSU. Get a top tire PSU listed here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108088

 

[notherdude]

Smell the power supply and see if you can spin it's fan manually. If it smells burnt and/or you can't spin the fan then it is likely dead.

But it could be something else, next likely is MOBO.

Smell the MOBO and carefully examine it for burn marks.

To further narrow it down you can use a PSU tester or simply short the correct pins together (green and black) to turn it on details and pictures here:
http://modtown.co.uk/mt/article2.php?id=psumod

 

[gigman]

I leaning towards mobo since I just tested the psu with another system and it worked

 

[MU_Engineer]

I just out together my biuld and installed vista and while getting drivers and such it radomly turned off like a power loss not shut down and then i started to smell somthing wierd and now nothing happens HELP

The smell was likely the smell of something burning. There are a large number of reasons why you might smell a burning smell and have your system shut off. However, if the PSU won't work with your motherboard but does with other systems, it's likely not the PSU at fault. You likely have a blown capacitor, burned-up IC, or a short somewhere either in your motherboard or a device attached to it. You could have also hooked something up incorrectly and fried it- being "one pin off" in hooking up a floppy's power cable would put +5VDC right to ground and invariably melt the floppy power connector and possibly start a fire. This isn't likely your situation as you'd smell something as soon as you turned the power on, but it sure sounds like a short somewhere to me. I'd also give your motherboard and CPU a good once-over for blown caps or anything that looks burned or like it had gotten very hot at some time.

 

[notherdude]

The smell was likely the smell of something burning. There are a large number of reasons why you might smell a burning smell and have your system shut off. However, if the PSU won't work with your motherboard but does with other systems, it's likely not the PSU at fault. You likely have a blown capacitor, burned-up IC, or a short somewhere either in your motherboard or a device attached to it. You could have also hooked something up incorrectly and fried it- being "one pin off" in hooking up a floppy's power cable would put +5VDC right to ground and invariably melt the floppy power connector and possibly start a fire. This isn't likely your situation as you'd smell something as soon as you turned the power on, but it sure sounds like a short somewhere to me. I'd also give your motherboard and CPU a good once-over for blown caps or anything that looks burned or like it had gotten very hot at some time.

I'll second MU. It could be anything on the board or connected to it. Make no assumptions. I had a PC smoke and seem to die recently. I actually saw the smoke rise. I took everything out fully expecting to find a burnt MOBO but it looked pristine. I rebuilt it barebones and it fired right up. I put everything back except a DVD drive which smelt a little 'off' and the system has worked perfectly now for a month or so. I have been afraid to even try the suspect drive.

 

[gigman]

I did put it together with just the cpu and ram and still nothing. Is it possible for a psu to be a lemon and only put out 100 watts or so? The other sytem I tried it in was my only other, a 800 mghz oldy so maybe it just is not putting out enough power? Fortunately I found that I actually got a one year warrenty on another lemon mobo I have and ill send that back and see if I get anything. On a side note I thought I'd add that when I first put the cpu in It had severaly minimally bent pins which I corrected with a pen. Everything did work when I first tried it and installed vista but very frequently I would get a blue screen that would say unexpected restart or somthing of that sort. What is the probability of the cpu?

 

[notherdude]

Not very likely. Bent pins are common, you straighten them out and it should work fine. CPUs almost never go bad, unless you severely over volt them or let them run without a HSF or something. MOBOs go bad all the time.

If the PSU starts another system it's probably OK. Anything is possible of course but it sounds like things are narrowing down to the MOBO to me.

 

[gigman]

The thing is the last mobo I had (the one im using now is a a differnet brand) didn't work from the start and the odds of having three defective mobos are kind of slim

 

[Shadow703793]

I leaning towards mobo since I just tested the psu with another system and it worked

This dosen't still eliminate PSU as a possibility. It could be that the system draws too much power,etc. so if you use it on a lower power draw PC then that would work on that PC Only.

 

[notherdude]

This dosen't still eliminate PSU as a possibility. It could be that the system draws too much power,etc. so if you use it on a lower power draw PC then that would work on that PC Only.

True. Still a possibility. Though it's ability to start another system makes this much less of a good bet than it sounded at the beginning. You could always buy a nice PSU from a store and then return it if that isn't the fix.

But I seriously doubt the CPU is the culprit.

 

[dragonsprayer]

First, this is great post on how to build a PC!

first, you prebuild the mobo on a box with the gpu, the psu you are using and then run in bios for 1-3 days. i build all computers like this. check the cpu temp and mobo temp etc - overclock the system beyond the final system.

i will run a 3.6ghz quad q6600 like this at 3.8ghz+ and burn it in! or an E8400 at 4.3ghz

second, when you build the pc you install all the parts you tested plus the cd, floppy etc (always hook up a card reader last after os)

power up the system does it work!

now add the extra parts - power it up! run it over night! or load the os with defult settings

now finish the wire job!

 

[PCKid777]

@ OP: Did you ever mention what PSU you are using? PLEASE LIST YOUR SYSTEM SPECS. IF it is some low wattage PSU with crappy 12V amps trying to run a quad core Sli setup, then ya, the PSU is underpowered....

BTW, you can have 3 bad boards in a row - the Gigabyte board I had (the first and the last) failed 4 times before I just stored it in my closet (RMA's temporarily fixed it until it would die again).

 

[Grimmy]

I just out together my biuld and installed vista and while getting drivers and such it radomly turned off like a power loss not shut down and then i started to smell somthing wierd and now nothing happens HELP

Usually not a good sign. And usually the PSU has those type of fatal farts.

 

[gigman]

Sorry about not posting my specs. I would like to say though that my first board that failed twice was a gigabyte. My current board is a asrock Alive nf6gvsta with a amd 64x2 5200 cpu, and an apevia iceberg power 640 watt psu.

 

[nitrous9200]

Apevia power supplies are highly non-recommended in communities like XtremeSystems, which put Aspire (Apevia's old name) in the 5th tier, which was the not recommended category. Who knows if that's the problem, though, you still have to test every part to get a good idea of what's wrong. Funny smells do usually indicate a power supply problem.

 

[Rohmaan]

Aspire PSU is 100% pure junk.

 

[SpudTECH]

Did you make sure that all the mobo posts are in the right spots and that there arn't any extras hiding under the board? I had a new guy fry 3 mobo in under 2 hours because he forgot to remove 1 stupid mobo post stud.

Also make sure that there arn't any unessessary connections- I had a customer that "cleaned his system" from all the dust and reconnected a floppy power cable to a fan voltage out point on the mobo-- that thing fried like a sinner on judgment day.

And the others are right: Aptiva/Aspire is pure junk when it comes to power supplies- one of them fried a mobo right in front of me and a customer.

 

[Shadow703793]

Did you make sure that all the mobo posts are in the right spots and that there arn't any extras hiding under the board? I had a new guy fry 3 mobo in under 2 hours because he forgot to remove 1 stupid mobo post stud.

Also make sure that there arn't any unessessary connections- I had a customer that "cleaned his system" from all the dust and reconnected a floppy power cable to a fan voltage out point on the mobo-- that thing fried like a sinner on judgment day.

Wow, that is sad. How could you connect a floppy power to a fan header unless you force it?!? What a noob (customer that is). :lol:

 

[gigman]

I fried I previus mobo because of the the little standoff post things but I was verrry careful not to do that this time.

 

[SpudTECH]

Yea... the best was he didn't speak a word of english so when I told him it had to be translated.... the delayed reaction was almost too funny....his eyes widened and he swore in spanish and stormed out and refused to pay..... the total was $212.87.

I haven't heard back from him and when I called his cell somone answewed "US-I.C.E."

I have a 90 day abandoment policy and that was 5 months ago so his dell piece o crap is now parted out.

 

[buzznut]

Did we ever find out where the "smell" was originating from?

If you have another system, could you hook up that power supply to this suspect mobo?

You say you tried to boot with minimal parts yes?

 

[Onus]

After reading some reviews and using a couple of them myself, I'm inclined to think that some models of Aspire/Apevia PSUs probably belong on Tier-4. I still wouldn't buy another one, but I wouldn't automatically assume it was the cause if a system croaked.

 

[gigman]

Unfortunately, I don't have a psu new enough to even have a cpu power plug and The smell was from the psu. Now I just have to wait for the eggheads to send me a replacement. I think it could have been the psu that is the reason my other 2 mobos got fried.