Fried?

[LukinStone]

Hello,

I just moved to a new place and hooked up my home built computer that I last upgraded a year ago to an existing router. I noticed that it had some trouble connecting to some sites on the first try, but it seemed okay if I reloaded or quit and opened a new browser.

I was testing the connection, so I watched some Hulu then played a game of L4D2. Fine for about five minutes, then complete crash, no signal to monitor.

I'm wondering how I can tell, short of removing the CPU fan, if I've fried something. Case fans spin, PHASE LED all lit up, but keyboard, mouse, monitor and Ethernet light all inactive. GPU fan spins. CPU fan not spinning.

Its warmer than usual in the new place, what's most likely to have blown? Suggestions?

 

[Twoboxer]

How long was the PC out of service?

Frankly, there are several possibilities. Statistically from high to low the most likely are PSU, vid card, mobo, cpu (distant 4th), cpu fan if there's an odd failsafe to prevent running w/o a fan. Swapping in working parts (or swapping your vid card eg into someone else's PC) is the best way to tell.

 

[LukinStone]

Thanks for the reply.

I had full use of the computer less than 24 hours before it crashed. After I got it hooked up in the new.place, it was running for a few hours (just FireFox and Windows Media Player) fine. Like I mentioned, the internet connection was a little shaky, but it seemed to fix itself.

Yeah, if I had the resources to switch and test the individual components, that would be my plan. But I all my spare parts are on the other side of town. I'm on a budget and I was holding off doing a needed upgrade until I could afford it.

Is the PSU really the most likely seeing as there's still power running to the fans, disk drive, etc?

I'll try to update with my system specs when I can.

 

[Twoboxer]

Yes, PSUs have a wide variety of failure modes and its not unusual at all for low power devices to run with a bad PSU. While PSU would still be on the top of the list, additional evidence is you crashed during a time of high power demand.

Fans and hard drives may fail as often as PSUs, but they are often obvious and don't get reported here. So PSUs account for more hardware issues resolved here than any other component.

When you update your specs, please include the brand and model of the psu.

 

[DelroyMonjo]

Sounds more like you have a house wiring problem. Most good PSU's will still operate at 90VAC but will really tax a computer PSU.

 

[Twoboxer]

You can test that with a lamp . . . a voltage so low would make the lamp very dim. A toaster running on that low a voltage would likely trip the circuit breaker.

Of course a volt meter is the most accurate test.

 

[zootnerper]

Re-seat all your components including the fan connectors. Maybe the move shuck them up a bit. Do the CPU last as this is more tricky to re-seat.

 

[LukinStone]

Thanks, all. Looks like the the PSU was the culprit, maybe along with the wiring in the house. The PSU was OCZ550FTY, a Fatal1ty modular one that I got on sale a while back. I got a heavy duty power strip and pulled an old PSU out of storage and everything seems to be fine.

Internet is still shaky, but the roommate is using an old router that I'll be able to replace soon too.

Thanks again.