PC issues - motherboard/PSU?

[ShivP]

Hi all,

My dad is having some issues with his system. It is quite old - Gigabyte H81M-HD3, i5 4440.

It has been refusing to turn on this morning. I have tested the PSU using the old trick of bridging green to any black - the PSU, fans etc turn on just fine.

When I connect the 24-pin back to the motherboard, it is dead. Manually bridging the power pins doesn't help either, so not the case power supply switch.

Prior to this ocasionally there was a "USB surge" error indicated but the PC performed fine otherwise.

I am assuming the board is dead?

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Justintime]

Clear CMOS or pull battery for an hour or so. Does sound like a dead board though. Reaseat memory, cpu and test outside case just to verify with no drives or pcie cards etc.. connected. Trying another psu won't hurt either as jumping it on and it spinning does not 100% guarantee its working fine. Also make sure 12v 4 pin is connected.

 

[EsaT]

Plenty of possible causes.

Only certain thing jumpstart trick tells is that PSU isn't 100% dead.
PSU could well be producing too much ripple and unstable voltages for PC to start.
That prior error might suggest there was already some issues earlier.
Especially if that's cheap PSU it's pretty old now.

Also that BIOS battery doesn't last forever.
And definitely try with minimum parts without drives just to see if you can get it to BIOS.

 

[ShivP]

Hello chaps

Good news (I guess) - it is the PSU. Thanks for all your help, I would not have tested the PSU again as I thought it was still working after paperclip test!

 

[ShivP]

Hello again chaps

Well this is embarrasing... a new PSU appears not to have solved the problem.

I have just plugged it all in etc, and it sometimes boots sometimes doesn't. All connections etc checked, seem fine.
If I change what is plugged into the I/O that seems to kick it into submission and allows it to boot. Then if I turn it off, it may not turn back on again... etc etc.

Board?

 

[Justintime]

Perhaps a usb device or such causing an issue? Its weird but at my old work we had issues with smartboards and some motherboards, if it was plugged in the pc either failed to post or hung on splash screen, boot with it out and then insert the usb when windows loaded and all was fine until cold boot. I myself have an issue with an Epiphany audio DAC and my x99 htpc, board fails boot and then restarts then complains about bios setting causing failed boot even though not a thing is overclcocked. Boot without it and it works just fine once plugged in later.