What's bust? PSU or Mobo?

Kenjiin

Kenjiin

Kenjiin

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Joined
27 Sep 2008
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260
Location
Maidstone
Ok I'm not very good at this stuff and about a month ago my comp stopped powering on. I thought it was my PSU and have recently been looking into buying a new one to fix it, but wanted to make sure it was the PSU before I waste money.

What's the best way to tell if its the PSU or motherboard thats dead? The comp won't power on at all, as if its not plugged into the mains.

Now there's no lights on my PSU to tell if its receiving power and as far as I can see there's no LED on the mobo either.

I took the PSU out my moms computer today and took it back to my place, plugged all the wires in and plugged in the power plug. Now the LED on the back of my mom's PSU is flashing, but the comp still won't do anything when I hit the power button. It does say 230v on the back of her psu and the only plugs I have are 250v, I was wondering if that might be why its not turning on? I really have no clue.

When I plug in my PSU nothing at all happens. There's no light to look at and it doesn't do anything when I power on the comp. I can hear electrical crackling when I slowly plug in the power cable into the back of it when the power switch is on, but neither psu actually tries to power on.

I really don't know how to find out if its my motherboard, psu or maybe something else.

My moms PSU is just some stock thing.
Mine is a Corsair HX 450w
Mobo is a Gigabyte M61PME-S2P

Neither of which I can find on the site anymore, got them in 09.

Can anyone help me figure out what exactly is broken so I don't replace the wrong component? thanks :)
 
On the PSU if you link out pins 13 & 14 (not counting the extra 4 pins which snap off) and connect a fan to one of the molex connections the psi should start when power is applied.

Considering the pc did not start with your mums PSU seems to point to a possible faulty motherboard.

* Or pins 15 & 16 counting with the extra 4 pins.

Have tried doing a CMOS feet on the motherboard and remove all the ram bar one module.
 
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Sorry I didn't really understand what you said >_< lol, I'm pretty rubbish with this stuff.

I just kind of plugged in everything where my psu was plugged in. With my moms I plugged in the 24pin plug thing into the mobo and the separate 4 pin one (my psu didnt have one of these). And I plugged in the connector to the HDD and disk drive.

My mums psu is a lot messier than mine and has wires everywhere. Lots of plugs with 4 circle holes in them which don't seem to plug in anywhere.

I keep thinking what if its just the power button not working, how would I even know that lol. But yeah is there any sure fire way to make sure its the motherboard? :/
 
Your Corsair PSU will have the 4 pin for cpu power!

To start the PSU without the motherboard you will need to link out the pins mentioned above on the main ATX connector using a paper clip or something equivalent (large 24 plug) I would remove all cables and just if possible connect a fan to one of the molex connections to the psu to add a little load.
 
Have you tried your psu on your mums pc.If her pc won`t start, it`s probably your psu. As you have a 7yr warranty, you could rma it.
 
Thanks for the video, that explained a lot. Now I just need a paperclip which I don't have at the moment lol. I do have the 4 pin like you said :P

Also, I don't have a fan to connect the psu to, should that make much of a difference?

Interestingly when the 24pin on my mum psu is plugged in, the led on the psu flashes, but with it unplugged its solid. I don't know if that would indicate anything about the motherboard to anyone.
 
I took my psu up to my mums house today and installed it into her pc. It started up perfectly and went to the windows login screen.

So I'm back to trying to figure out what's faulty. When I got home I took out the little cmos watch battery thing for a min and put it back in but that didn't help. Nothing else connected to motherboard doesn't work. I tried 1 bar or ram and still no boot.

Any idea's on how to diagnose this problem? Is it likely to be the motherboard or could it possibly be something else?

Really need some help :/
 
I should note that what seemed to cause this problem in the first place was that I installed a fried HDD (forgetting it was fried), I can't remember if anything happened when I tried to boot that up. But when I installed my HDD back in this happened and I haven't been able to power on the comp ever since.

I don't know if that gives anyone any idea what it may have effected? Someone said it might be my cpu, but with or without a cpu on the motherboard I should still be able to power the comp on shouldn't I? Atleast to make the fans work.

Any help is welcome here :)
 
Try checking all your mobo connections to make sure you hav`nt dislodged any. Very easy to disconnect a lead without realising it.
 
Everything is connected properly from what I can tell.

Is the only way of finding out if the motherboard is dead is to buy a new one?
 
AMD Athlon II dual core
Gigabyte M61PME-S2P Motherboard
Corsair HX 450w PSU
1gb 4850
4gb Hyperx DDR2
500gb HDD

Had it since Sept 2009.
 
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