How many

scotsdragon

scotsdragon

scotsdragon

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Joined
1 Apr 2013
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2,149
Location
Dundee, Scotland
How many pc's do you need to build before you'd consider your self a competent builder?


I my self have built over 25 computers for friends and family (and obviously when things go wrong fix/upgrade them for them to lol)


The reason I am building another computer for my sister after her old computer finally gave up the ghost after about 10 years, I bought a new psu, cpu ,mobo, 4gb of memory, HDD and case.


After building it all was well for about an hour then its just shuts off for no reason (no blue screens) just shuts off.

I thought ok its either over heating or psu but tested everything else .


What I did

Checked mobo was updated to latest bios

Put ram in my media pc ran mem test over night (no errors and when in the new mobo all was displayed in bios and in the windows control panel)

Ran crystal disk info on the HDD said all was good and temp was fine

Checked cooler was seated properly and had good paste coverage

Installed HW monitor NO cores or core temps were showing

Installed core temp again no Temps were showing

Psu I tested with the bridging tool that can be bought from OCUK (hate the paper clip test) it ran fine (obviously could test it under load)

Went into bios set Optimised defaults incase it was bad setting (although I would have thought this would be a blue screen or refuse to boot if it was) and set a temp warning for 70 degrees in there for good measure.

Hell I even went into the power option and set it to never put monitor or pc to sleep just incase it was that

Fired it up and after about 10 mins it just shutdown no temp warning, no blue screen just shut off.

by this point I think yeah I have tested everything


I got in touch with the vendor of the CPU, MOBO and PSU, ask them to rma them diagnose which one was at fault and replace the offending article (note I wanted them replaced not refunded).


This is the response I got .....

Thank you for your webnote

In this instance i would recommend taking your system/build to a qualified technician to diagnose your components to determine which item is faulty

Once the faulty item is confirmed, please contact us to raise an RMA on the item for you so we can arrange for a replacement to be shipped to you.



They want me to pay a qualified technician (even tho I have built around 25 machines and repaired loads more) to tell me one of the items is faulty. so now I have instead of asking for a replacement have asked for a refund.


here is the mobo, cpu and psu, the ram is 4gb geil 2133mhz, HDD 500gb Seagate barracuda and case is the corsair spec 01 (which my media pc was in for a fortnight before the one I wanted came out so I know everything is working)


YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte F2A88X-D3H AMD A88X (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020046-UK) £34.99
1 x AMD A4-6300 3.70GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Dual Core Processor (AD6300OKHLBOX) £25.99
Total : £130.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
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while the PC is on for the ten minutes before it shuts down are you able to get any CPU temps from it at all?

can try the following link to see if you can get the CPU temps

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

when the CPU\paste was checked did you re seat the cooler or did you just check visually?

do you have a spare PSU you can use to see if it works with that ok?
 
scotsdragon said:
They want me to pay a qualified technician (even tho I have built around 25 machines and repaired loads more) to tell me one of the items is faulty. so now I have instead of asking for a replacement have asked for a refund.
Click to expand...

What else can they suggest? You have plenty of experience but you don't have the means to deduce which component is faulty.

Without spares to swap in and out there's not much more you can do (as you've realised!).
 
NO I don't reaper unfortunatly, I kind of thought it was psu and assumed the vendor being a well known online PC component and specialist pc retailer , they would receive the rma diagnose it and replace it (I kind of wondered tho why no temps were showing on core temp and HW monitor ? (latest version of both).
 
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Simpliest thing to do at this point would be back to barebones.

Strip everything out the case onto a box & bare minimum installed, which in this case is the APU and 1 stick of RAM + the PSU, everything else unplugged.

Get into the BIOS, and see if it shuts down after a certain amount of time.
 
Try re pasting the cpu cooler? Also can you get like a cheap PSU somewhere for 20 quid just to try if its not the PSU as suggested ?
If not what Reaperguy suggested, start from scratch
 
Ive been using the ram (bought elsewhere) since yesterday morning in my media pc (watched movies listening to music and such all day, am even typing this message on it lol) so its not the ram, I do believe it is the psu (but as you have said since I do not have a spare psu to test it I cant be 100 percent sure) but since I have to pay to send the items back I wanted them to diagnose whats wrong and why these programmes displays no temps (im not sure how these are measured I assume its probs in the cpu and or mobo). a few quick google searches show these programmes work with these cpus (checked incase it wasn't supported)

After all its new kit everything should work (obviously not the case)


SMRTKA im not going out and spending more money when im within my rma time I am a student just now and cant spend more time on this as I have tests coming up and need to revise, and I literally cant go out and spend money willy nilly.
 
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can you not try your PSU from your media PC to see if it solves the issues at all with it just running the bare minimum?

maybe a bit of a pain but might be worth a try
 
im not stripping down my media pc, putting ram in it to test was hard enough because of its location but disconnecting it and pulling everything out just to get the psu out and then having to redo all the cable management and getting it back together and in would be a huge task in its self
 
I know it mighty be a big job, but proper diagnostic comes from eliminating possible causes of problems...And if you don't want to spend more money then you have to take the bullet and pull the PSU from your HTPC. You might end up sending psu away paying for postage and they will return it saying its all ok so loosing money with no solution....

It won't be rams as they would 99% of time blue screen /or wont turn on / or beep differently while booting (correct me if wrong)

Possible causes: PSU/CPU/MOBO
have you chcek Event viewer in windows? does it give any indication ?


scotsdragon said:
im not stripping down my media pc, putting ram in it to test was hard enough because of its location but disconnecting it and pulling everything out just to get the psu out and then having to redo all the cable management and getting it back together and in would be a huge task in its self
Click to expand...
 
I haven't smrtka once I received that reply from them, and asked for a refund as I was in my rma period I stripped it down ready to be sent back, I have received the rma number and am off to the post office.

as for the event viewer it didn't say anything normally youd get windows has recover from an unexpected shutdown error code or that but nothing
 
Well mate, it worked out for you now lets see if it was the PSU after all.
I hope it was so no more hassle.


scotsdragon said:
I haven't smrtka once I received that reply from them, and asked for a refund as I was in my rma period I stripped it down ready to be sent back, I have received the rma number and am off to the post office.

as for the event viewer it didn't say anything normally youd get windows has recover from an unexpected shutdown error code or that but nothing
Click to expand...
 
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