PSU Overheat or Impending Failure?

slimgenre

November 26, 2012 2:28:10 PM

So I'm in game for about 3 or 4 hours last night. Logged out of the game to windows and jumped up and walked away from my computer. Came back about 10 minutes later and my comp was turned off (powered down). I thought that was odd and hit the switch to turn it back on, the led's on my fans blinked (they're plugged into psu via molex, not thru mobo) and nothing happened. I unplugged all my power cables to the mobo and gpu and used a paperclip to try to start it, same thing. I checked online last night and read that either the psu fried or the mobo did. Went to bed angry as I just built it a month ago.

Got up this morning and tried again before work and it turned on when I used the paperclip. Plugged everything back in and my computer started up normally (except for the "windows did not shut down properly" screen during bootup and everything was running fine, no damage that I can tell to any component.

So here's my question, do you think the psu overheated and turned itself off? Or do you think my psu will fail and I should replace it? I have a removable filter on the bottom of my case for the psu fan, and although it wasn't completely gunked over, it was definitely not getting great airflow.

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alvine

Power supply Expert

November 26, 2012 2:35:38 PM

if the fans dont spin its the psu, if you had the fans spin but no signal on the monitor then its mobo
get a new power supply, dont attempt to "repair" your old psu as you can get shocked

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-Jackson

November 26, 2012 2:35:57 PM

Can't really say for sure at this point. But a good guess would be overheating, try solve something out for that.
If it happens once or twice after that, then I'd start worrying.

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slimgenre

November 26, 2012 4:17:42 PM

fans did not spin last night, the led's flickered and the fans turned about a centimeter, and that was it, they were only thing plugged in when I tried last night, I unplugged the mobo and gpu to make sure nothing shorted... tried again this morning, fans turned on just fine, plugged everything else back in and it booted up just fine. I'm going to hope it was overheating and go from there, but I will keep an eye on it and replace if it keeps happening.

I have dogs, they shed... I'm sure that was the problem. I'll try to be more diligent in cleaning my filters.

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slimgenre

November 26, 2012 11:55:03 PM

ok, so I get home tonight after work, turned my fans up (use nzxt sentry) and pop, everything dies again. Disconnect all fans, psu powers up mobo, gpu and hard drive and boots up to windows, I try to connect my fans, and pop dies again. So I think maybe I have a short somewhere in my fans and start to take everything apart to figure it out.

Now my computer is on, but will only recognize my main SSD OS drive. My HDD does not recognize... I don't even think it's getting power, I can't hear it spinning. I'm going to try a different SATA port and see if that helps, at least that may tell me if it's a mobo problem or not, but I definitely still think my psu was the problem, and now I'm worried that I fried my HDD (not the end of the world I guess, but still a hastle).

I'm going to take my HDD to a friend tomorrow to see if we can get it started, in the mean time, I'm boxing my psu up and probably sending it back.

Any other thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. My computer has worked great since I built it and now... comedy of errors.

UPDATE - Just tried my main drive on a different SATA port, and it's working fine, so I'm guessing either the psu is not powering the HDD or it's fried.

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