Dead PC

steveliddle

steveliddle

steveliddle

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Joined
29 Dec 2012
Posts
109
Location
England
Hi All

Not sure if this is the correct location, but the PC bought from here died last week and looking for suggestions

1 x OcUK GeForce Titan X 12 TB
1 x Acer Predator XB270HU 27" G-Sync Monitor
1 x Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Proces
1x Asus X99-A Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
1 x Kingston Predator 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C13 2666MHz Quad Channel Kit -
1 x Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 1000W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i GTX 240mm High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
1 x BeQuiet Silent Base 800

Extras:
1x 256 GB samsung evo,
Seagate 8TB BarraCuda 5400RPM 256MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (ST8000DM004)
AIO GPU cooling loop from EVGA

built in 2015, recently tried to turn on the pc and the cpu, psu and gpu fans span for a few seconds and nothing happened.
removed all external cables and onto the desk where I could see 00 on the led motherboard area. Seems CMOS was the issue, so removed the CMOS battery replaced the jumpers to 2-3 for a few mins. Jumpers back to 1-2 and a new battery inserted.
Now I get a red PWRSW and RSTW green on, no movement of any fans.
Removed ram, gpu no effect. then removed and replaced the cables from the PSU, also no effect

Drives removed and replaced with one from another pc that failed to work.

Writing this on a passive linux box.

Anyone got any suggestions as to the likely cause of failure and how to fix.
Could be a dead motherboard, psu or cpu ?
replaced the power lead from a working one and no issues there

Took a quick look on motherboard pages and the X99 does not seem to be sold any more which means that if I got someone local to take a look, they are unlikely to be able to fix with the same,

Due to the position of the CPU cooling fan, the ram sticks are not in optimal location, but nothing that could be done at the time.
So are there any checks that I can do this end with a multimeter that is somewhere in the house and if as I suspect the pc is dead, can I re-use the ram at least ?

And would it simply be a case of a new motherboard, CPU plus thermal paste ?

Not into overclocking, but still into gaming :)

edit: would be interested in an M2 boot drive, but not sure if any way to get the licence details off the old drive other than plugging it into this pc ?
 
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unable to boot the pc to even get to the bios, if I could get to the bios that would be nice, but when the pc has power, all I get is
red PWRSW and RSTW green

Went to the evga support forums and followed out the checks suggested on https://www.evga.com/support/faq/FAQdetails.aspx?faqid=59582 which suggests that the PSU is not the issue as when the paperclip on the motherboard is in the holes, the fan runs.
So the problem appears to lie with the motherboard or the cpu

when the power button is pressed there are no beeps, the mouse and case lights such as around the power button are not illuminated either
 
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yes, i did look into it:

How do I recover from dual BIOS?

  • 6. Turn on the motherboard by pressing the case power on button (this is as far as i got). Once the board starts this time you should see the Gigabyte splash screen, or POST page, then the Auto-Recovery from Dual BIOS will kick in. You will see a checksum error, and then recovery from BACKUP BIOS will begin.

    no splash screen, no sounds that the drive or cpu fans usually make when starting up but will try monday
 
Suspect too late for that, recall it was a 3 year warranty and the local guy has confirmed that either the mobo or the cpu is dead, he was going to hand it back to me, but suggested he might like to price up to get a new mobo and cpu.
found out the issue with the dual bios, the board got changed to an asus x99 which only has the single bios, no idea why it got swapped and the copy of the pdf invoice is on the dead pc and on the external drive that does not work with linux

my building skills have not been used for several years and would prefer someone who knows what they are doing and can fix it if it does not work when they build it
 
stock cooler ? it came fitted with water cooler
the power supply seems to be ok based on the paperclip test, will have to see if my "spare" psu can power the board, but probably not
there is no on board graphics and the screen is hdmi / 4k
 
thanks for the comments, checking the psu out in more detail this afternoon, got the old gaming pc working, no sound and no login for here, bookmarks and mobile bookmarks not the same

got a multimeter and so need to get that sorted and check the power rails, will be reading the evga site in more detail, would sooner take the time to check the stuff correctly than order stuff that I thought was broken only to find it is ok and it is something else
 
edited the original post for motherboard, unable to find the receipt, but have the old gaming pc back which is compatible with the backup drive.
being a stock ocuk built pc there is no spare bits of pc's and no spare coolers, the cpu coolers attached to the other working pc's are for different sized cpu's and if I start removing working bits, I mght end up with non working bits

so my problem is being able to diagnose what is wrong with the psu or motherboard / cpu.

Took the psu out again and got the mobo cable attached where I could work on it, with a multimeter, I got 10 volts from pin 16 (PS-on), 25 Volts from pin 9 (+5vSB) and the paperclip trick still worked

made an account on the evga support site, so will have a look at that and may well take off the cpu cooler on sunday


https://www.tonymacx86.com/attachments/atx24-pinout-jpg.197622/
 
had an interesting afternoon, did the sensible step of changing the psu.
Seems my old gaming pc has a 700 watt psu and used the graphics card.

the cpu fans were not removed from the motherboard,. the power supply was the only change

https://thumbsnap.com/s/8bbN48Ss.jpg shows that I can boot and the psu seems to be the issue, not the mobo/cpu that got charged £30 for diagnostics

the cpu reseating would need more thermal paste ideally, will contact staff to see about an rma
 
the noise seemed to be from the gpu which is back in the other pc along with the other psu, that pc is ok
guess something was not plugged in on the dead pc when the old psu was used.

the spare psu when fitted got me to the post screen and showed the cpu temp heading towards too hot, so it was shut down

so my choices seem to be to get the psu replaced, or get a cheap cooler for £40 or so.

The puzzle is that I got a good airflow from the cpu cooler when it was being powered by what I think is a dead psu (the 1000Watt one that came with the pc) the fans only pumped for a few seconds before power dropping, yet the old psu could probably have booted the pc, but the cpu would have fried
 
the original GPU has not been used, the one in use was from the old gaming pc, figured it would need less power than the titan.

it got put back in the old gaming pc along with the lower powered psu. that pc was working fine with good temps. had it online for a few hours after putting it all back together

the video was of the original psu, it never booted to post.

the photo of the pc at post was the gaming psu, but there was no power to the cpu pump and so did not boot it for long as it would have cooked it
the video of the gpu and cpu fans going for a few secs was the original psu that never got to post.

a failed cooler pump is a possibility, just need to work out how to get the top section of the case off as the twin radiator would need to be removed.
I could buy another AIO cpu cooler and if I find it is not the issue, then use that for a second pc to be a basic pc for general browsing and films etc, but would water cool that as well.

the gpu cooling grill was almost but not quite full of fluff and dust that looked ok from the outside and looking thru the fan.

sent a staff member a pm as well as the original thread got hidden a few years ago.

the old psu is a OCZ StealthXStream2 700w Silent ATX2 Power Supply 80PLUS, but thanks for taking the time to reply :)
 
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put the test psu into the dead pc and followed the advice from Ohlawll about a sata lead round the back of the pc that powers the cpu cooler.

booted ok, then tried more memory and it did not like it until all the memory removed and back to a single stick

i did have a load of error codes made harder to read as the pc is upside down and on the side.

added a network cable and copied spreadsheets and bookmarks to a usb drive on the work's pc.

I suspect that the PSU is the main issue and will have to test the ram slots on tuesday

never really noticed led codes before and when all the ram was in the machine refused to boot, so other issues as well,

The psu should be covered under the 10 year warranty, possible the ram as well
 
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put the gaming psu into the old gaming pc, booted ok with the fans all working

so looks like a new cpu and a motherboard are needed.

not easy to replace either and 6 years is not too bad,

will make another post in a better location as really need all the ram slots away from where the gpu fan sits (next to the connections side as it blocks 1 slot.

would also like more ram, but maybe in a few stages
 
changed a few things around on the weekend, nothing booted, but have had the cpu cooler working ok

this included removing, cleaning and replacing the cpu block with fresh TP

CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 32 °C Windsor 90nm Technology
RAM 4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 374MHz (5-5-5-18)
Motherboard ASUSTeK Computer INC. M2A-VM HDMI (Socket AM2 ) 26 °C
Graphics 1023MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (Gigabyte) 30 °C

The current cpu socket is LGA 2011 and AM2 for the old pc

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/be-quiet-pure-rock-2-black-cpu-cooler-120mm-hs-01k-bq.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/be-quiet-dark-rock-slim-cpu-cooler-120mm-hs-01g-bq.html

intention would be to test the pc with one of these and if I need to replace the cooler, will swap back to another water cooler and use this cooler in the am2 socket pc
 
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so much for a reply, even if I changed the cpu cooler and it confirmed that the cpu was dead, not easy to find a new one and then I might find other issues

usage role has changed and a newish upgrade could be more effective.
 
been looking at the possible reasons for failure and dropped How long will a water cooling loop last? into google, out comes my cooler with an estimate of 5 years which is a bit less than the current age of the system, so now looking for fan and fin coolers for the cpu
 
the cpu has an AIO from corsair to a dual rad, the pc died about 6 years old and so figured time to get a fin and fan cooler that seems well rated :)

out of interest, when building the new pc, the cpu will only fit one way ? and is there an easy way to tell ?
 
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