PC Boots, clicks, powers down, then reboots just fine.

[mimsy]

Hello all.

I recently reformatted an old machine, installed a new optical drive,gave it a clean out with some compressed air, reformatted etc.

Now when I power it up, 3-4 seconds later there is a mechanical clicking sound of some kind, it powers down for 2-3 seconds (not immediately after the click noise, about a second later), automatically reboots, then boots up just fine and continues to operate flawlessly at decent temperatures.

When I first reformatted it and fitted the new optical drive, it gave me a cpu fan error message in bios. I discovered when I had used the compressed air to clean it out, several clumps had managed to get into the fan enclosure. I took it apart and removed them, replaced the fan, and that message no longer appears.

I was wondering if you ladies and gentlemen could perhaps assist me in pinpointing the issue.

Specs:

i5-2500k 3.3ghz (overclocked using the in built bios functions to about 4.4ghz, nothing too crazy).
I actually forget the name of the motherboard, P67-Pro maybe? (But don't worry, its the revision 2 one, not the one with failing SATA controllers)
2x2GB DDR3 Sticks.
Radeon 6970 2gig GFX Card.
1TB Seagate HD.
Windows 7 Home.

Things I have attempted myself:

Giving it another clean with a can of compressed air,
Removing the fans and giving them a good clean out, replacing them.
Reseating the RAM
Checking the connections of everything plugged into the motherboard I could find.
Googling the problem (mostly only endless loop stuff pops up, but the few relevant threads I found suggested it could be a HD fault, will be able to test this tomorrow / Friday when I borrow a working HD from a friend).


Thank you in advance for your time.

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... it is not liking your Ram/CPU/Memory BIO's stored setting?... and is re-setting them to allow BOOT!... Check... edit... and SAVE different Ram/CPU/Memory settings?

 

[mimsy]

Hmm, my technical knowledge is not the best. If you have the time could you perhaps provide more detail on what it is I need to do to follow your steps?

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... Motherboards BIO's will boot with the stored settings... ( you have overclocked stored settings? ) At the time of Boot, it was not happy with the stored settings... Thus they will try to re-boot, with a safer CPU/Memory/Ram setting.

In other words... shut off your overclock... AND save the settings... and see if your problem goes away?... your OVERCLOCK settings are not stable? for the Hardware/motherboard/BIO's.

 

[mimsy]

The settings I am using are just the performance/turbo ones provided with the motherboard, no custom profile or anything. It has been operating on these settings for over a year with no problems. So Unless I am not understanding your reply, I do not think this is the cause.

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... Your perfectly fine to think what you want... : ) But in my world... things wear out... get older... lose performance... and need adjusting from time to time.

 

[mimsy]

My apologies, I did not see your previous edit and was mis-understanding your post. Switching from performance to balance option has stopped the reset behaviour.

The clicking sound still persists though, any insights on that?

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... most the time that could be a Fan wearing out... Fan blades hitting something... Power Supply starting to fail/capacitors worn out/shorting/electrical spark noises? Hardrive is wearing out? They start a mechanical clicking noise before failure, need to start backing up DATA before failure.

Get your EAR closer to each part... to determine where it is?

 

[mimsy]

Thanks for the response. I've checked the fans and they appear to be fine. Will test a different hard drive tomorrow when I am able to borrow one.

Are there any tests I can do for the PSU?