Has my PSU died?

I think my PSU has died. For a while now there has been a really high pitched sound coming from my computer tower, but I always assumed it was something to do with the sound input slot because when I touched around that area the sound would disappear, although not always for long.

Anyway this has been happening for a week or two but my PC has been running fine. Then today I was watching some TV when my bro came in and asked why my PC wouldn't turn on. I went up expecting the PSU was turned off, or the power cable had come out but everything was fine, my PC just wouldn't turn on at the front. I unplugged the PSU for a minute or two and then plugged it back in and the PC booted fine. My brother was on my PC for about half an hour and when he told me he'd done I found my PC off. I'm not sure if he shut it down or it just switched itself off. I turned it on and it came on okay and loaded to the desktop but I didn't use it, I left it there while I watched some TV. Must have been about 15 mins and suddenly I realise it had turned off. I tried to turn it back on by pressing the button at the front but nothing happened, so I tried unplugging the PSU and then when I tried it the tower literally powered on for less than second before dying.

I haven't been able to turn it on since, and depending on I unplug the PSU for a few minutes first, when I try it either boots for a millisecond and turns off or doesn't turn on at all. I've also noticed that the high pitched sound I described earlier is coming from my PSU, because it stops completely when I turn it off and then starts when it's turned on. It's getting ever so slightly louder too.

So is the problem obvious? Has my PSU died?

(I've obviously tried opening up my PC and checking all connections are fine and the routine stuff)

Did you check the RAM? Overclocked, heat?

I would suspect the PSU otherwise.

edit: nevermind

alexhull24 said:

Did you check the RAM? Overclocked, heat?

I would suspect the PSU otherwise.

Click to expand...

no overclocking at all. pc hasn't booted since so i haven't checked the temp. will do if it ever comes back on though.

and i made sure ram was seated firmly although i'll try removing a stick and seeing if it helps.

Really sounds like your psu. It happend to mine, allthough i was running a 8800 gts off a 200 watt power supply . It did the thing your descriping it seemed to be dead but unplugging everything and connecting everthing seem to do the trick and it worked fine for awhile but it just died totally after that.

I would suggest sniffing the back of your psu when mine went it had a really wired smell, kinda like burnt metal, its hard to descrbie though.

Yeah, the classic burning electrical component smell often comes from a fried PSU. You can still smell it for days after if you haven't moved the machine!

Just try removing everything you can from the machine except the vital components, and see what happens. Then you can add them back if it works and find the troublesome one, though it sounds a lot like PSU.

Yea I had a similar thing happen to me, where my psu was making a high pitch noise, eventually when I was playing a game smoke started to come out, so switched off the pc and took the psu out, and bought a new one. Aparently this is called a psu whine. The coil in the psu was burning out I think. Yea I would buy a new psu asap, I was lucky enough nothing happened to my pc accept the psu.