psu gone bad?

antihero

antihero

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Paul
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I've had issues every now and again with my pc just switching itself off, but this morning it just froze on me.

After doing a reset, it wouldn't boot with no post beep. If I leave it a while it will beep and start to boot then freeze again mid boot.

My initial feeling is the psu, but is there anything else I should look for?
 
over heating maybe, are all the fans working and heatsinks clear of dust? or the heatsink maybe loose.

or a memory issue. while youve got the case open check the seating of the memory for starters.
 
My Compaq did pretty much the same when it was only a month old. Sent it back to Compaq and they fitted a new motherboard which worked for a few weeks then did the same again.
Have now binned said mobo and done a homebuild in the Compaq casing which now runs sweet as a nut!

PS - before I sent it back to Compaq I tried a different PSU, CPU, RAM, hard drive, graphics card but it all pointed to the motherboard. After Googling it I found out it is a common thing with my model mobo
 
Thanks guys, will do some proper testing tonight when the kids are in bed.

Can't really afford to buy lots so need to try an pinpoint the source. My gut says psu closely followed by the mobo.

Will post later tonight or tomorrow with any findings
 
Sounds like an overheating issue to me too.
Cliff
 
a psu wouldnt really cause a lockup, if it wasnt powerful enough id expect it to switch off under full load or at boot (initial switch on is the most stressful time for a psu).

if it was failing id expect it to randomly power off and not be able to power on for an hour or so.
 
well, pc sat for an hour or so and now boots. I unplugged the dvd and hdd to see if the POST passed or failed and restarted several times. Passed every time (it wasnt earlier, maybe 1 in 3 passed).

Plugged everything back in and it now boots into win7, interesting thing though is that it detected usb devices as if it had never seen them before and installed the drivers for them. hmmmm.
 
The usb thing happens if you put the plugs back in different sockets. Was the CPU fan Ok and all clean?
 
just a quick update.....

graphics card removed and tried onboard gfx, no change. checked everything was seated correctly and not come loose.

Also remembered that i had the barebones of an old pc in the garage...so had to strip mine down and transplant my mobo, hdd etc into the barebones pc (mine is microatx so there is no way that i'd have got the other psu in it). Finally found an adapter so i could plug the new psu into my sata drive....fired up and.....no difference. PSU in now ruled out and main culprit is looking like the mobo :/
 
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