Comp won't boot and/or shuts down out of nowhereFollow

Hi All,

So here's the deal. I've got a custom built computer, specs as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
AMD Radeon 6870 1gb
Gigabyte something or other mobo
4gb Crucial DDR2 Ram
PPC PSU 750w

Built it about two years ago now, and haven't had any problems with it, ever. (obviously the graphics card was updated recently, but that's been running fine for about a month).

We just moved, though I was very careful with the PC in the move, and to my knowledge it never was dropped or hit or anything.

Set it all up the other night and it booted up just fine, browsed around a bit, then left it on over night. The next evening, I opened up FFXIV, the update downloaded, installed, and then right as I was trying to log on, the computer just shut down completely. It is on a surge protector, along with my speakers and monitor, and both of those stayed powered on.

When I hit the power button on the PC, the lights turned on, fans started spinning, and then it died right away, before a POST beep. It did that several time when I'd press the power button, every once in a while it would attempt to restart itself as well.

So I tried plugging it into a different outlet. It actually booted up, but then shut down again after about 2 minutes (I was able to log into my Windows 7, but it shut down before I even opened anything).

So, I have opened it up and reseated power cords and ram and GPU, but that didn't fix it. The PSU works, at least a little, so it's hard to tell if it's that.

I do have the CPU overclocked just marginally, and soon as I get home will try getting it to boot so I can reset the BIOS, but barring that as the issue, any idea what it might be? Any suggestions for diagnosing?

thanks,

Stri

Yeah, PSU issue possibly.

I'd also check to make sure the CPU heatsink is seated, and perhaps reset the BIOS by pulling the CMOS battery for a few minutes.

What type of cooling do you have on the CPU and how far up is "a little overclocked" It might very well be the PSU, the other likely culprit would be a major ram fault in one or more of the sticks, or possibly the CPU itself which depending on the specific motherboard might be enough to send the board into shutdown mode. or it could be the board overheated and a capacitor is failing. You can probably rule out your drives entirely.

The outlet could be wired wrong too, that would explain the PSU failure if thats what occured. Maybe buy a cheap $5 ish outlet tester at home depot and check that before you replace anything.

When you say dying before post beep, does that mean that you can't get any display to start up? And this seems to be intermittent (sometimes, it'll boot up or at least get farther and sometimes not)?

I'd say almost definitely the power supply. Mainboards tend to either work or not (or they might cause random flaky crashes, but that's not what's going on). Same deal with ram. Somewhat the same deal with the CPU. About the only test you can do is swapping out ram, and that'll only work if you have enough sticks to reduce the number while still meeting the board requirements (which a lot of systems don't have). You can try that just to see, but if it doesn't change anything, you're kinda at the risk of just trying stuff.

Before tearing off the cpu, I'd just buy a replacement power supply and see if that fixes the problem.

you actually can get good overclocks on air with the right setup and environment. Been pushing my E8400 hard for almost 2 years on air (3.8GHz to 4.16 GHz across 3 boards), but I have a megahalems with khaze fan and high airflow--stupid thing needs airport clearance to boot up.

I would seriously look into your power supply and regulation. I know it's a pain, but might want to pull your HS and check the circuits around your CPU socket. See if you can spot any discoloration, swelling/cracking of the casings on the capacitors, funky smells, etc. I've had Gigabyte boards flake out with their VRM's before--overheat and just blow on you. If there is an undervoltage state, it can cause them to overheat trying to compensate the current to feed the watts to the CPU and such. Also, a 750 watt PSU could be cutting it kinda close for that rig, depending on what all else you have running in there--especially if it's not an 80+ certified PSU. You'll need roughly 500W of clean power for a high overclock with that rig. If you are marginal on the actual output (some less expensive PSU's can only provide 60% under stress), it could have been baked slowly over time due to the same heat conditions.

Raist