Please help troubleshooting

[Rugger]

My daughter is starting college and I’m resuscitating a somewhat dated PC that I originally built in the spring of 2006; it’s been in storage for about the past 1.5years. Built this puppy to handle the previous iteration of Morrowind series (Oblivion) and it worked great for several years before being shelved when I built my current rig for SC2. It will be used for college work…internet, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. I don’t need a beast – this should be more than enough for expected use. Specs:
Asus A8R-MVP
AMD A64 3200+ w/stock HSF
Sapphire X1800XT
2GB G.Skill PC4000 RAM
1xHDD
DVD R/RW
Linksys PCI wireless-G NIC
1x120MM case fan
Antec P150
Antec Neo HE 430W

Connected everything, hit the power button…failed to boot. Fans spin, no signal to the monitor. Swapped in another PC to make sure I had a good monitor, keyboard, mouse, cables; got a good boot.

Broke out my trusty PSU tester (Rosewill RTK-PST), plugged the 24-pin and the PCIe power cables into the tester and cycled the PSU on. Received a fault response from the tester on +5V; reading was 3.9V. Tried it a couple more times and the results were repeatable. Thought I had my problem isolated and pulled the trigger to get the Corsair CX430 V2 on Newegg.

Went ahead and removed the PSU from the case…curiosity kicked in and I decided to test the PSU with the 24pin and the 4pin CPU plug. To my surprise, the test came back Sat, including the +5V. This made me wonder if I just had a bad cable or maybe a bad modular cable receptacle. I decided to do some more testing. I tried the 24pin and rotated the 6-pin PCIe through each of the modular receptacles on the PSU…all tested Sat. Added SATA power cable and a 4pin Molex (the only other power cables I had installed in the PC) and the test was sat.

Now I’m beginning to wonder if I have another issue in the PC or if I was using bad testing procedures. I just realized that I had the repeatable bad results when testing the 24pin and 6pin PCIe AND the remaining cables still plugged in (4pin CPU in the mobo, SATA power to hdd, 4pin molex for case fan and DVD). Was I getting a fault indication because I hadn’t removed the other component’s power cables? Bad PSU or something else? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated…

I have a couple of days until the new PSU gets here so the next thing I intend to do:
1. Remove all components from the case and thoroughly clean everything
2. Remove CMOS battery to reset BIOS
3. Attempt to boot with minimum components: mobo, GPU, RAM, and HDD

 

[king smp]

you are doing all the right things
but remember that a PSU needs to have a minimal load to really work
just running a volt meter on it with no load doesnt give reliable data
edit- if you are using a meter specifically designed for PSU testing than that would simulate a load

if you can read this and follow the instructions it would really help you
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems

usually the symptoms you describe is PSU just from my experience
also check your usb ports
sometimes pins get bent in there and can cause a short
which would cause that condition since the PSU protection circuits would kick in and prevent startup

 

[Rugger]

I'm really leaning towards bad PSU, too. Will continue to troubleshoot but don't think i'm going to make much progress until the Corsair PSU gets here. Good point on the USB connections. I always disconnect all the front panel port connectors when I do a minimalist boot...one more thing to eliminate in the isolation game.

 

[king smp]

the PSU replacement is really your best diagnostic option right now
I hope it works well
let me know how you make out
I might be gone for a bit
but will defintely be checking back

 

[Rugger]

Best answer selected by Rugger.

 

[king smp]

thank you very much for selecting me as Best Answer
Please Private Message me by clicking on my avatar to let me know how it worked
I am in process of moving so might be awhile before I answer but I will

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey