cubbyhill1996

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Dec 7, 2010
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Ok so, My PSU has been acting up lately, Every once in a while I would start it up it would make a very loud rumbling noise, it sounded like it was going to explode. I would shut it off and turn it back on and everything would be fine. Last night I shut my computer off, and now it won't turn on. The motherboard light is green and everything starts fine but won't boot. I've re sat every thing on the mobo. I just got a new mother board and Vid Card. And I tested my ram hard drive ETC.
My Specs are: Amd Athlon II 4 2.93
Ati 5670
PSU Rion 485D 450 Watt
Asus M477D mother board
HDD: western Ditagel
Ram: Is generic ram from HP it works so doesn't matter
This is a home built machine also. :fou:
 

gefthebest

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Dec 23, 2010
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Hi cubbyhill1996,

A rumble noise? I believe thats usually caused by hardware weirdness like cables in the way of fans and stuff like that. Noise beyond a certain level can't come from too many places: Fans, hard drive or CD drive. Does the noise come specifically from the PSU? If so then either something's in the way of the fan or the fan is turning faster than usual or acting weird.
If something's not in the way, than it could be that the fan is unstable, like tilted, broken or unscrewed a little...

Otherwise it could be very high speed. Now thats a rly different problem, I am not very confident in providing you with a good answer to that problem but one suggestion I could make would be to check that the power supplied by the PSU is compatible (sufficient) with your components, especially motherboard and graphics card as they are the biggest consumers.

I was checking the power requirements, your graphics card alone requires 350W of power, the CPU is around the 50s (I'm not sure of your model exactly) so thers only 50 W remaining for all the remaining components, you might be a little short.

Hope that helps.
 
A 1 GB 5670 only needs about 6 amps (72 watts). That 350 watt figure is for a complete "typical" system. A good 450 watt PSU will be more than adequate to power the system.

Work through our standard checklist and troubleshooting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-read-posting-boot-problems
I mean work through, not just read over it. We spent a lot of time on this. It should find most of the problems.

If not, continue.

I have tested the following beep patterns on Gigabyte, eVGA, and ECS motherboards. Other BIOS' may be different.

Breadboard - that will help isolate any kind of case problem you might have.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/262730-31-breadboarding

Breadboard with just motherboard, CPU & HSF, case speaker, and PSU.

Make sure you plug the CPU power cable in. The system will not boot without it.

I always breadboard a new build. It takes only a few minutes, and you know you are putting good parts in the case once you are finished.

You can turn on the PC by momentarily shorting the two pins that the case power switch goes to. You should hear a series of long, single beeps indicating memory problems. Silence indicates a problem with (in most likely order) the PSU, motherboard, or CPU. Remember, at this time, you do not have a graphics card installed so the load on your PSU will be reduced.

If no beeps:
Running fans and drives and motherboard LED's do not necessarily indicate a good PSU. In the absence of a single short beep, they also do not indicate that the system is booting.

At this point, you can sort of check the PSU. Try to borrow a known good PSU of around 550 - 600 watts. That will power just about any system with a single GPU. If you cannot do that, use a DMM to measure the voltages. Measure between the colored wires and either chassis ground or the black wires. Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire: 5 volts always on. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.

You can turn on the PSU by completely disconnecting the PSU and using a paperclip or jumper wire to short the green wire to one of the neighboring black wires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4&feature=youtube_gdata

A way that might be easier is to use the main power plug. Working from the back of the plug where the wires come out, use a bare paperclip to short between the green wire and one of the neighboring black wires. That will do the same thing with an installed PSU. It is also an easy way to bypass a questionable case power switch.

This checks the PSU under no load conditions, so it is not completely reliable. But if it can not pass this, it is dead. Then repeat the checks with the PSU plugged into the computer to put a load on the PSU.

If the system beeps:
If it looks like the PSU is good, install a memory stick. Boot. Beep pattern should change to one long and several short beeps indicating a missing graphics card.

Silence, long single beeps, or series of short beeps indicate a problem with the memory. If you get short beeps verify that the memory is in the appropriate motherboard slots.

Insert the video card and connect any necessary PCIe power connectors. Boot. At this point, the system should POST successfully (a single short beep). Notice that you do not need keyboard, mouse, monitor, or drives to successfully POST.
At this point, if the system doesn't work, it's either the video card or an inadequate PSU. Or rarely - the motherboard's PCIe interface.

Now start connecting the rest of the devices starting with the monitor, then keyboard and mouse, then the rest of the devices, testing after each step. It's possible that you can pass the POST with a defective video card. The POST routines can only check the video interface. It cannot check the internal parts of the video card.
 

shovenose

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i have never heard of that psu brand before. meaning its probably off-brand generic made-in-china crap that cant really do what the label says it can. a lousy psu can cause tons of problems, like not booting or system crashes. get a quality psu from antec, corsair, seasonic, etc. a good quality 450w should work fine
 

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