Issue with PC

Lee

Lee

Lee

Associate
Joined
21 Dec 2006
Posts
478
Location
Northampton
Looking for some help and advice here. The father-in-law's PC stopped working last night. It's been working fine for around a year since I upgraded CPU, motherboard and RAM (Asus Z170, i5 CPU). He's claiming (and I'm not sure I believe this) that there was a lot of crackling noise last night then it wouldn't power on. The issue is that the noise came from near the monitor which is on the desk, the case is on the floor.....

Basically the PC does not POST. You can see that the board is getting power as the LED's on the board are lit. When you push the power button, the fans (CPU, Case and PSU) spin for a second and then stop for a couple, then spin up again for a second and stop etc etc etc (the Power button light flashes in sync with the fans).

I've tried resetting the BIOS by removing CMOS battery and shorting the required jumpers. I've re-seated all power connections and checked all others. I've disconnected everything (RAM, DVD drive, HDD's), but still the same.

I'm thinking it may be a PSU issue as that's an old OCZ (with only a 4 pin ATX connector) that I used for his original PC build a good few years ago.

What does anyone think ?
 
I'd think a fried psu too. If it is fried, it could have damaged other compnents, so I'd start by trying a different psu that you know works, and go from there.

Edit ..long shot but have you tried pressing reset button after the initial power on, my much older asus board has a 'feature' where it will fail on a fully cold boot (disconnected mains) the first time, and then is fine on 2nd boot after a reset, but it doesn't happen on a 'warm boot'.

The 'crackling' sound is a bit odious though. Have you ruled out a faulty monitor?
 
Last edited:
Thanks Matty, I tried the reset button but it didn't seem to do anything....The monitor was disconnected when I was testing it so it can't be that. Just need to work out if I should take the PSU from the family PC to try it or just buy another one....
 
Good luck.. have you inspected the motherboard for any fat capacitors, burn marks and given it a good sniff for any smell of burning? Any visual signs of overheating, discoloration etc? All cables look good?
 
Last edited:
All looks good to me. I couldn't smell anything, but wasn't really trying to.....
 
Pleased to say that the PSU was at fault and the replacement did the trick.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom