PC intermittently refusing to start.

[rulocal]

I have recently upgrade the GFX and CPU on my PC and am having intermittent startup problems. I push the "on" button and nothing happens. On other occasions it will be fine and when it starts up everything runs smoothly. My current kit is.

Epox 9nda3+ Motherboard
Ati X1950 Pro Gfx
Opteron 165
Corsair 2GB PC3200
80Gb Hard Drive
Hiper 580 PSU

The PSU is the obvious culprit, both in terms of the symptoms and the amount of failures reported on this board. However, in it’s defence I have had no problems with it and it has never made any worrying noises to suggest it is on the verge of failing. I appreciate the new graphics card will be drawing a lot more from it than it has in the past. but would this cause these symptoms. As I said above once the pc starts everything is fine: Priming, benchmarking and games.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[rulocal]

I was going to do that this weekend, if necessary. It just seems odd that once everything is up and runnning the pc runs perfectly.

 

[rulocal]

have you tried with the old gfx card /cpu swapped back in, one at a time to see if it still happens when the new gfx card or new cpu are in ?

I have ried the old kit and rebuilt the pc from scratch, but to no avail. I can't work out what is happening. The symptomps perhaps point to a PSU but why would the upgrade of components cause this to happen. I am sure the PSU has enouigh power as once the computer is up and running I have no problems at all.

Unplugging the cable once I have truned the machine off seems to increase the chances of it starting, although, to be honest, this could be random. If I was convinced it was the PSU I would have no qualms about getting a new one but it would be very annoying to sepnd the cash only to find it does not cure the problem.

Any more ideas or tests to try and isolate the problem?

Many thanks

 

[rulocal]

have you tried running with 1 stick of memory ?

what gfx card did u upgrade from ?

do the voltage lines on the psu seem correct 12v, 5, 3.3 ?

I have just tried 1 stick of ram but no improvement.

I upgraded from a Gefore 6800

I am not sure how to test the voltage lines. What prgram would you recommend?

Interestingly, when it finally decided to start this time, it did not actually boot up. Fans spun, but beep or post. I turned off again waited 10 mins and it was fine. Does this offer any extra clues?

 

[rulocal]

I have googled and found something called Speedfan. I do not know if it is set up properly but here are the readings.


Vcore 1.38V
+12V 5.84V
3.3V 1.62V
Vcc 5.15V
Vin2 0V
5Vsb 5.07V
Vbat 0

Can I read anything into these readings?

 

[rulocal]

i've had that before but it was due to a problem i had seating my cpu cooler.

for the psu voltages go into the bios and see what they read in there. easiest thing to do for a quick check.

think speedfan may need configuring for you're setup as the readings dont really make sense to me.

The only rail voltage I can find in the BIOS is +%V, which is showing as 5.16V. All ther other voltages; chipset, cpu,ddram are at the set values, give or take a little bit.

 

[rulocal]

Voltages are fine I think, according to the EPox motherboard utility that came with the board.

Any other ideas would be gratefully received. Could it be a capacitor on the motherboard?

I am at my wits end as the PC runs fine when it is on but just will not start all the time, particularly after it has just been turned off. I could probably put up with it, except I am worried it is a prelude to my PSU blowing up!

Cheers

 

[rulocal]

Sounds similar to the issue I have had with 3 Hiper 580 modular PSU's, in my case although some of the various lights come on / fans run, some things just dont seem to power up (chasers on ballistix ram - even HDD doesnt seem to be running). After 3 units (the 3rd one died completely today just one month after exchange) I have had enough and Im changing PSU's and making sure that none of my friends ever make the mistake of buying Hiper.

When you had the problems ones did your PC start eventually. Mine does and once up and running it is absolutely fine.

 

[rulocal]

Memtest is the best RAM testing software.