pc turns on for a second and then turns off

Kierannock

Kierannock

Kierannock

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I've had my pc for about 2 years and up until today no problems, however today I bought a new cheap gfx card(£30) just so that I could play a fairly basic game(gfx wise)

I installed the gfx card and tried to turn on the pc, the fans spun for a second and the pc turned off, my first though was the power supply couldn't handle the graphics card, this seemed strange because I used to have a much more powerful gfx card in the pc which i removed about a year ago, so i removed the gfx card and tried to start the pc again, it turned on and fan spun then the pc shut off, i took this that the gfx wasn't the cause, i tried another psu with the pc and it worked, i tried the pcs psu in another pc and it worked, so the pc seems fine and the psu seems fine, however when i try them together it doesn't work
so
PC1 and PSU1 won't work
PC1 and PSU2 do work
PC2 and PSU1 do work
any help is appreciated
 
I will assume that PC2 is lower spec (or at least has a lower power requirement) than PC1, indicating that PSU1 is able to deliver less power than PSU2. Whether or not this is due to differences in specification or aging or mechanical issues (dicky connectors) I couldn't say.
 
If it helps,
PC1 has a m2n68-la motherboard. amd athlon 2 x260 cpu and 4gb ram
PC2 has a much better motherboard can't remember the model name, amd fx 4100 processor and 8gb ram

PSU1 is £20 500watt
PSU2 is Thermaltake Smart 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply
 
Kierannock said:
If it helps,
PSU1 is £20 500watt
PSU2 is Thermaltake Smart 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply
Click to expand...

You answered your own question imo.

PSU1 is almost certainly lacking in 12V power. The GPU was probably the last straw for a PSU that was, probably, near the limit of its 12V capability since you got it.
 
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How did i answer my own question?
A bit more info
The PC that won't run has had the same PSU(£20 500watt) for over 2 years and has run fine up until today, it used to use a hd Radeon 6450 gfx card but i took it out because i didn't use that pc for games but it used the gfx card for about a year, i removed the gfx card and put it into my brother's computer because he plays more games than I, however i decided I wanted to play a a game today and so i bought a cheap gfx card, after trying to install the gfx card the computer powered on for a second and turned off.

I have a better quality computer that has the thermaltake so thinking that the crappy £20 psu had died i tried the thermaltake and the pc worked, i also tried the crappy £20 psu in my better quality pc and it worked, so afaik
crappy psu works in a better quality pc and beter quality psu works in a crappy pc and better quality pc but the crappy psu won't work in the crappy pc.
 
ok i get that but the pc has been running for a year without the gfx card and now it won't even run without it.

I'm trying to get it to run as it has done for the last year, which is without the gfx card i bought today, since i put the gfx card in and then removed it, the pc has been unable to power up for more than 1 second.
 
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You might have pushed the PSU over the limit when you added the gfx card and it is now faulty and can't provide stable enough power to power your rig.

IMHO just get a good quality PSU and chuck out that old cheap one they might work OK for a bit but usually goes faulty or even worse kills your other components.
 
Why is the crappy psu able to run the better quality pc but not the crappy pc?
the reason i'm asking is because i'm worried it's something more, if the PSU was unable to run anything i'd be fine with just replacing it, but because it's able to run a better quality pc i'm worried the problem may be more than just the psu.
 
I would guess that the newer architecture of PC2 is more efficient than that of PC1. The fact that PSU1 will work with PSU2 shows that there is nothing wrong with PC1 other than the PSU.
 
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