System Failure NEED URGENT HELP...

Hi,

I have recently been experiencing a severe problem with my PC. The PC is about 6 months old now and I built the system myself. The system specs are as follows:

*ASUS M2N32 WS Professional Motherboard
*AMD Athlon 64 X2 5800+ Dual Core CPU
*Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro
*Corsair XMS2 Dominator 2GB Matched Pair
*Tagan TG600-U35 Easycon XL 600W PSU
*XFX GeForce 8800 Ultra GPU
*120GB Seagate Barracuda HDD
*ASUS Dual Layer Lightscribe DVD-RW
*Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case

Initially the problem was that it was freezing after POST. Occasionally I was able to get in to Windows XP SP2 but after about five seconds it would freeze.

Recently the problem has become more severe. The PC now behaves very strangely. Upon switching the system on it will switch itself off almost immediately, perhaps within a second or two. There is no smell of electrical burning and I have thoroughly cleaned the inside of the case, including all fans. Every fan within the system except for the GPU fan is spinning. The PSU fan is also spinning. I have two internal case fans which are on their highest setting and both the case, motherboard and CPU temperatures are running below normal as at one point early in the problem I was able to enter the BIOS and review the temperatures.

I have run the system in several configurations. No HDD, no DVD, no memory, 1 stick of RAM, both sticks, no GPU and nothing except the CPU. Each time the PC remains the same and switches off almost immediately. I have today replaced the CPU fan to no avail. I have also correctly cleared the RTC RAM by removing power and battery and changing my jumper for five seconds.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what is wrong. I have a sneaking suspicion that the motherboard may well be at fault but I do not know. Can anyone help or make any suggestion of how to test the motherboard. Thank you.

Regards

Gareth

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

The thing is I am getting power to the board as the LED on the motherboard is lit, also the PSU fan is spinning absolutely fine and there are no strange noises or anomilies coming from the PSU.

Regards

Gareth

Just done several more tests with the motherboard out of the chassis and it turns out it stays on as long as the processor is not plugged in indicating that the problem is the processor. The thing is that their doesn't appear to be any obvious damage. No burning, it's not hot, no electrical burning smell and all the pins are OK. Seems very strange to me. I think it may be a setting on the motherboard to do with CPU overheating. It may be that the CPU overheating protection is not monitoring the CPU temperature correctly and shutting the system off to prevent damage to the CPU. The thing is, with no CPU in place the display will not show up so I can't enter the BOS and switch that setting off.

Any ideas?

Regards

Gareth

^Agreed. PSU is most likely the cause. Imo, CPU is the least suspect UNLESS you OCed it with ridiculous amounts of voltage,etc. It could also be that some thing is causing a short circuit some where (seen this happen).

It has to be either the mobo or power supply, almost like the mobo signals the PSU that its ready for power then no power. If you PSU has indeed gone south, then no power no post or freeze. I'll bet my bottom dollar its the mobo. I had the same problem last June where my mobo (Asus P5B Deluxe) would do the same thing randomly freeze before, after post. It got worse slowly like yours is doing and then would not post anymore. So I got this awesome Asus P5E and haven't looked back. You need to rule out the PSU so using another one will tell all, then if its still no good it must be the mobo.

BTW you have done a very good job trouble shooting your system, there wasn't one thing I could think of that you didn't already do.