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Okay so this one has a bit of a story. Built a PC, all worked fine, handed over to my friend. A week later he calls to say it wont power on. I take it back and have a look, sure enough it won't power on. Suspecting a failed PSU (it was a cheap Aerocool Cylon 700W) I go upstairs and get a brand new one, exactly the same. On opening the replacement PSU is physically deformed, and then I open a 3rd, same again the housing is physically deformed. the two replacment PSUs had obviously been dropped from a height. It made me wonder if the original (all 3 were the same PSU all ordered from Scan) had also taken a fall and stopped working.
All I have left is a "Builder" 500W PSU which comes from CCL, looks nasty, but I can get it to power the system and will act as a stop gap until I can fit a better one. Works when fitting at my house, drive the PC over and on testing his end it won't power on again. I open up the case and check cabling, it appears fine, and boots intermittently but not with any obvious pattern. In the end I switch the power cable going to the fans (via a fan controller) and it appears to solve the issue (switching back the original power line causes the system to not boot, switch back to the alternative power line and it boots fine - it seemed like I'd found the cause of the issue using the cheap "Builder" PSU. I put it down to a fault on a cable, cover the faulty cable with some electrical tape and get on my way. A few days later the PC eventually stops powering on again.
I end up sourcing a 2nd hand Corsair CX550M, looks in excellent condition and the buyer seems legit on collection Buyer was selling as they'd upgraded to a 3080 and needed a higher power PSU. Setup the PC with the new Corsair CX550M PSU and all is working again. I chalk it up to a run of bad luck with poor quality PSUs and hand the PC back fully working. PC continues to work for 3 weeks without issue. Yesterday I get a call saying the PC won't power on again.
I bring the PC home again, switch out the CX550M with an EVGA 600W - all works again without issue. I then switch back the the CX550M, and the system boots first time as if nothing was ever wrong with it. At this point I'm suspecting the issue wasn't with the PSU (at least not the CX550M). The fan controller wasn't secured to the case and the back of the PCB was just tucked away loosely into the case, I'm wondering if the solder points on the back edge are shorting on the case, so I cover them with some electrical tape to ensure they can't contact anything metal. All working last night with the CX550M, tried again the morning, booted fine. I've just tried a 3rd time this afternoon and the same issue has reared it's head again - the PC has barely been moved and it's not responding. I unplug the CPU 8 pin, 24 pin, GPU power cables, unplug the fan controller, remove the battery. I replug the CPU and 24 pin cbales, and the PC boots without issue. I've now reinserted the battery and GPU and it's still booting fine. I've left the fan controller unplugged (along with the fans) and left the side of the case open for ventilation.
Plan is to periodically get it to try and boot for the next couple of weeks to ensure it seems stable.
To be clear when booting the PC runs flawless, no crashing, rebooting, freezing or sudden lose of power. It seems to be specific to getting the PC to initially boot from cold.
I'm at a bit of a loss as to the cause at the moment, but would welcome any suggestions / thoughts.
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