System won't power up

[Jamie Clay]

I had a system die suddenly last night - HP with an AMD Quad. It appeared to be the power supply, the system showed no sign of life, would not react to the power button or having the switch in the back toggled.

I replaced the power supply and as soon as the power supply's switch was thrown the fans on the motherboard would power up for a couple of seconds then power down. No beeps. The display never showed the bios screen. The system is non responsive to the power button and goes on immediately once power is switched on the power supply.

I tried a number of classic trouble shooting tests,

- removed the memory, it beeped but still shut down
- removed the CPU, the remaining system fans continued to run, the motherboard didn't shut down
- changed the graphics card - no change
- reset the CMOS - no change

Then I made the mistake of testing the removed power supply in another (non-critical) system I had - now it behaves in a similar manner to the first system.

So I have to figure the bad power supply scrambled something - and I'm not sure other than trial and error how to determine what. I suspected the CPU may have been damaged only because in the first system, when I removed the CPU and powered it up, the fans continued to run.

Anyway - any advice on how to isolate the problem so I can get this system back up and running would be appreciated.


HP Pavilion p6320y Phenom ll X4 2.8GHz, 16GB DDR3, 1TB SATA, DVDRW, 802.11N, Win 7 64-bit

 

[nna2]

do you have a friend with another phenom II or compatible motherboard? you could try that to start, i would also try another power supply

 

[aleb]

Yeah like what nna2 said, that is probably the best option. There is no real way to trouble shoot specific parts without having parts that you know work. What I would do is (since you replaced the power supply) buy a cheap AM3 cpu eg: http://www.antarespro.com/6889053-item-AMD-SDX140HBK13GQ.aspx?sgd=330d319d313d316d309

Test it and if it still doesn't work, send it back.

 

[Jamie Clay]

Thanks - I was thinking of going that route and now I see it's not a bad approach, especially if I go with a cheap CPU to test with. Originally I was thinking of using the same one and that was $90 on eBay - still 'cheap' but I wanted to see if there was a more direct test to determine where the problem is.

I guess I could assume if replacing the CPU does fix the one, it probably will fix the other.