Problem with Friends PC. am I right?

Hedge

Hedge

Hedge

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After my mate told me his computer was knackered I went down to have a look at it.

I turned it on, got into safemode then once restarting It wouldnt get anywhere near posting. So I went into bios and set everything on optimized defaults incase anything was messed up. before i could even exit bios it turned itself off.

so i tried again.. lasted a short time then turned off again..

I left it for 10 minutes incase it was overheating or somethign. booted it up and it got to the point where it would start running windows, then blue screened and shut down.

Gives me the impression the PSU or the Memory is buggered.

I dont fix pcs often so im not 100% , but that seems to be the likely problems?

its got a cheap crap PSU in it which has probably just burned out
 
a very similar thing happened to my parents crappy eMachines laptop thing, turned out to be a software problem tho, did the usual of puttin memory in and out but thats as far as ive ever been on a laptop so gave it to me friend whos a self proclaimed 'laptop specialist' and it turned out to be the vista boot loader or sumthing, why it was having restarts as if it was overheating from software but blah.
 
Well i spoke to him and asked him to have a look inside and he said the CPU heatsink was hanging off...

one of the mounting clips had sheered off. rendering it pretty useless.

He has an Athlon64 x2 6000

Its housed in a crap motherboard, with a super crap psu.

Hes tempted to upgrade but only has about 200 quid to spend.

Is it worth buying some new components? maybe sell the cpu for 30-40 quid?
 
cpu may possibly be fried if its been running hot for a while. im assuming its the classic plastic mount snap that is so common on that socket type?

Problem is heat makes plastic brittle and over time very weak.
 
Musty Pie said:
cpu may possibly be fried if its been running hot for a while. im assuming its the classic plastic mount snap that is so common on that socket type?

Problem is heat makes plastic brittle and over time very weak.
Click to expand...

Yeah its the plastic mounting thats sheared off.

I dont think its been running long enough to fry itself, but im not sure.

Is an upgrade viable with 200 quid?

He currently has 2gb of cheapass value pc 5300 ram in it too
 
depends entirely what he used it for and was he happy with the spec proir to the failure? if he was spec him a similar replacement if not tell him to save a lil more and buy something worthwhile
 
Well theres the option of getting a new mother board (assuming thats necessary regarding the mounting clip).. and hoping it all works afterwards.

Or maybe tell him to save up 300 and get something which performs a lot better. He plays WoW but I think he turns down a lot of the details because the graphics card he has installed is a bit poop!
 
For an budget upgrade you could go for a E5200, Abit IP35XE Pro and 2x2Gb ram for just under £200 at the moment but would require a PCI-e graphics card to go with it. I've just done this upgrade and its a big improvement over my old system for not a lot of money. Seems to be a popular budget upgrade going by the number of posts that recommend it.
 
You would get exactly the same symptoms if your Southbrige controller is overheating. (fan stopped/heatsink fallen off)
It's a common problem with Nvidia motherboards. Less so with Intels.

But as you state he's buggered it himself (cpu) so he'll have to stump up for new parts.
 
A lot of motherboards will power off if the CPU temp goes too high, which is probably whats happened.

I'd replace the motherboard, cpu cooler and PSU. If his graphics card is causing a problem, he should still be able to replace that within 200
 
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