Hi,
On Sunday morning I tried to start my home-built computer. However, when I pushed the power on button on the front of the case, absolutely nothing happened. No beeps, no fans, no output from the GPU, nothing. So, immediately I thought a fuse or something had blown, and the PSU wasn't getting power. Upon inspection I found the red light at the back of the PSU on (there is a light inside the PSU's power on switch). I switched the power socket anyway and tried again without success.
The PC shutdown absolutely fine on Saturday night without any hints of a problem, and after light use. I built the PC myself a year and half ago and have had no substantial problems since then. Here are the specs;
AMD Phenom II x4 965 CPU (Black Edition)
Gigabyte MA770T-UD3 Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 5750 GPU
Hiper Type-R 580W PSU (modular)
All parts were bought new apart from the PSU which I bought second hand, the stcker on it says it passed quality control in Dec 2005, so it is quite old, but hasn't given any problems yet.
I have tried everything I can think of or do with the tools I have available (I don't have a spare PSU or voltmeter laying around to really test things). Nonetheless, I have tried a number of things. I tested the case's power button by both shorting the two terminals on the motherboard, and by switching the reset and power buttons (i.e. plugging the reset button into the motherboard's power on terminals), both to no avail. I checked the motherboard for leaking or burst capacitors, but I cannot see any and there are no unusual smells from inside the PC . I also couldn't see anywhere where the motherboard could be shorting out.
So I decided in anguish to completely strip and rebuild the PC (ruining many hours of cable management
). I took EVERYTHING out, and unplugged everything, the only thing I wasn't able to remove was the CPU and its heatsink since I had no thermal paste to put it back together . I put together the bare essentials ; the PSU , CPU, GPU, one stick of RAM, and ofcoarse the motherboard, along with the CPU fan and one case fan (both connected to fan terminals on the motherboard - I normally have 6 fans connected to an Akasa fan controller) . I tried again, but nothing happened, just like before. I then decided to rebuild an old Dell computer I had to get online to check for solutions (I have no other PC in the house). When I was reinstalling Windows on the Dell, I happened, out of boredom, to turn the PSU off and then on again via the PSU's switch on its back. I tried the power button again, and to my surprise the computer began to boot! It obviously didn't fully boot because I had no hard drive plugged and the BIOS displayed an error to that effect.
I thought that maybe there was a problem in the ATX power cable or GPU power cable (I have extensions for both), and as a result power wasn't getting to the essential components.
I figured whatever problem there was had sorted itself out, so I began rebuilding the PC (this time without the power cable extensions). However, I have not had the computer working since, neither when I had the computer partially rebuilt, nor when I restored the PC to the bare minimum that I had it at when it worked last (I took the computer apart again to that bare minimum when it wasn't working in the more built up state).
I should mention that the PSU does not have a voltage selector to differentiate between USA and UK voltages, so it cannot be that this was accidentally moved to the wrong setting. Also, the PC had power being supplied to it the whole time I was preparing the old Dell (around an hour or so) before I had it working in the bare minimum state.
I am obviously very confused. I figure there must be a problem in either the PSU or the motherboard, but there is the red light on the PSU when it recieves power indicating it is ok, and there is no visible damage (that I can spot) to the motherboard, and it booted in the bare minimum state, which suggests the motherboard is fine.
Obviously, any help in discovering the problem would be much appreciated .
Regards,
Ryan Mckeown
On Sunday morning I tried to start my home-built computer. However, when I pushed the power on button on the front of the case, absolutely nothing happened. No beeps, no fans, no output from the GPU, nothing. So, immediately I thought a fuse or something had blown, and the PSU wasn't getting power. Upon inspection I found the red light at the back of the PSU on (there is a light inside the PSU's power on switch). I switched the power socket anyway and tried again without success.
The PC shutdown absolutely fine on Saturday night without any hints of a problem, and after light use. I built the PC myself a year and half ago and have had no substantial problems since then. Here are the specs;
AMD Phenom II x4 965 CPU (Black Edition)
Gigabyte MA770T-UD3 Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 5750 GPU
Hiper Type-R 580W PSU (modular)
All parts were bought new apart from the PSU which I bought second hand, the stcker on it says it passed quality control in Dec 2005, so it is quite old, but hasn't given any problems yet.
I have tried everything I can think of or do with the tools I have available (I don't have a spare PSU or voltmeter laying around to really test things). Nonetheless, I have tried a number of things. I tested the case's power button by both shorting the two terminals on the motherboard, and by switching the reset and power buttons (i.e. plugging the reset button into the motherboard's power on terminals), both to no avail. I checked the motherboard for leaking or burst capacitors, but I cannot see any and there are no unusual smells from inside the PC . I also couldn't see anywhere where the motherboard could be shorting out.
So I decided in anguish to completely strip and rebuild the PC (ruining many hours of cable management
). I took EVERYTHING out, and unplugged everything, the only thing I wasn't able to remove was the CPU and its heatsink since I had no thermal paste to put it back together . I put together the bare essentials ; the PSU , CPU, GPU, one stick of RAM, and ofcoarse the motherboard, along with the CPU fan and one case fan (both connected to fan terminals on the motherboard - I normally have 6 fans connected to an Akasa fan controller) . I tried again, but nothing happened, just like before. I then decided to rebuild an old Dell computer I had to get online to check for solutions (I have no other PC in the house). When I was reinstalling Windows on the Dell, I happened, out of boredom, to turn the PSU off and then on again via the PSU's switch on its back. I tried the power button again, and to my surprise the computer began to boot! It obviously didn't fully boot because I had no hard drive plugged and the BIOS displayed an error to that effect. I thought that maybe there was a problem in the ATX power cable or GPU power cable (I have extensions for both), and as a result power wasn't getting to the essential components.
I figured whatever problem there was had sorted itself out, so I began rebuilding the PC (this time without the power cable extensions). However, I have not had the computer working since, neither when I had the computer partially rebuilt, nor when I restored the PC to the bare minimum that I had it at when it worked last (I took the computer apart again to that bare minimum when it wasn't working in the more built up state).
I should mention that the PSU does not have a voltage selector to differentiate between USA and UK voltages, so it cannot be that this was accidentally moved to the wrong setting. Also, the PC had power being supplied to it the whole time I was preparing the old Dell (around an hour or so) before I had it working in the bare minimum state.
I am obviously very confused. I figure there must be a problem in either the PSU or the motherboard, but there is the red light on the PSU when it recieves power indicating it is ok, and there is no visible damage (that I can spot) to the motherboard, and it booted in the bare minimum state, which suggests the motherboard is fine.
Obviously, any help in discovering the problem would be much appreciated .
Regards,
Ryan Mckeown
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