PC not powering up

The Belgain

The Belgain

The Belgain

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Joined
24 Jan 2003
Posts
637
Location
London
Hi there,

Since last night, my PC isn't powering up at all: when hitting the power button nothing happens at all (no fans spinning up, no post, etc.). Now my guess is that this pretty much has to be either the PSU or the motherboard that are dead (if anything else went wrong, I'd at least get the PSU fans and case fans spinning up right?).

Now I don't have any other computer bits lying around - is there any way I can determine whether the problem lies with the PSU or the motherboard? I'm thinking the motherboard is probably more likely here because a couple of things had gone wrong with it in the last couple of days (onboard NIC not working, PC hung on last power down). As I'm going to have to send one or the other back for an RMA, I don't want to get it wrong though, so any help would be much appreciated.

Also another question: do you reckon a 425W PSU would be sufficient for the following:
- S478 mobo with onboard Intel graphics
- 2.4 GHz P4
- 1 stick RAM
- 2x PCI TV tuner card
- 1x PCI SATA controller
- 6x hard disks
- DVD-RW drive
- USB wifi NIC

Thanks
 
Who makes the PSU - Hiper at a guess as they are the only ones I can think of offhand who make 425w PSUs? You should just about get away with 425w for that system but I suspect you will be near the limit particularly with 6 hard drives and you have to remember that hard drives get less efficient over time.

Have you tried rebuilding and booting with the bare minimum installed to see if that has any effect?
 
Plug the power cable your for your PSU into a kettle. This has happened to me before, although i have a 550watt. All i did was take the cable out, and put it back in again. Bizaar.
 
I've just tried a different cable, and it makes no difference.

I haven't tried removing bits of hardware from it and trying again, but I can't see that they'd cause none of the fans to spin up - surely for them to make any difference they'd have to have some power?

Is there any way to get the PSU to just spin up by itself? If not then I think I'll just have to take my chances and send the motherboard back (and coff up the shipping fees if it's not faulty). And yes, this is a Hiper PSU. I wouldn't have thought I was particularly near the limit - the 5 extra hard drives shouldn't use more than a graphics card would (and I have onboard graphics)...
 
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Well if you remove bits of hardware then you can see if it is because of the load that is a problem. Each hard drive will use somewhere in the region of 15w when running normally and maybe double that while spinning up(rough guess).

You can start a PSU on its own, you need to short out certain pins, I don't have time to look just now but there are threads in the forum about doing it - you need a paperclip or thin bit of wire to cover two pins.
 
Right - well I'm pretty much stuck now I think. I've tried unplugging some of the drives, and that doesn't help. A couple of things I've noticed though:

- The LEDs on the PCI cards light up when the mains power is connected.
- I've checked that the problem isn't with the power button on the case.

The one thing I do have lying around is a very old P2 motherboard - will the PSU work with this? I'll give this a go tomorrow...
 
p2 should be atx board. so it shoudl work fine. that 425w psu should be more than enough for the system your running.

sounds like your board may be wounded but only 1 way to find out.
 
Thanks for the help; I'll post back once I've tested the PSU on the P2 board.

If it's the motherboard then it's not too much hassle, as it's still under warrantee. Out of interest, what are EQS board like quality-wise (they don't seem to be very common; I went for it because it's the only PCI-E S478 board with onboard graphics as far as I can make out)? Hopefully their RMA service is going to be pretty quick, cos that 1.2TB unavailable until the replacement comes back...
 
Well, thanks for the help guys. I've hooked the PSU up to a different computer, and it powers it up fine. I'm guessing that pretty much pins it down to the motherboard (which I'll just send back for an RMA).

Cheers.
 
I can't believe it; I'd RMA'ed that motherboard, got a replacement, and installed it. It worked fine for about a week, and then just now it's gone and done exactly the same s***ing thing!

The system hung completely while it was running, I powered it down, and now it won't power up again. Have I just been incredibly unlucky here? Or are EQS known for making particularly dodgy motherboards? Could something else in my system be causing the problem here (if so, how could I go about figuring out what that might be)?

I'm really getting a bit fed up with this - it's a right faff having to RMA stuff like this (turnaround time isn't particularly fast). Any suggestions / comments?
 
Thinking about it, I guess the most likely culprit would be the PSU being a little underpowered for the setup (though I don't really think it should be). Even though the PSU doesn't seem to have packed up, maybe I could do with replacing it with something more powerful?

Or am I clutching at straws here. It's connected through a surge protector, so that should be protecting from any power spikes from the mains...
 
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