Dead PC

[wellmad]

My desktop PC seems to have died, it's been fine all day but when I came back in the room it was off. It won't even switch on!

The first time I tried to switch it on it made it to the windows login screen and then shut off again, now it won't even go to the BIOS. Every now and then when I try and switch it on the front case light flashes briefly but it still doesn't come on...other than that, nothing at all - the fans don't spin up, nothing. There is a green LED on my motherboard and that is on, but other than that it's totally dead.

Any ideas? There's obviously power going in as the mobo LED is lit, but could it be the PSU? If that was dead the LED wouldn't come on would it? But if it was something else surely it would still go to the BIOS..?

I have the following setup:

ASUS P5K deluxe wifi
Q6600 (OC to 3.17Ghz)
4Gb XMS2 RAM
128Gb SSD (pretty new < 3 mths)
Geforce 9800 GT (really new, like a week old)
Thermalright Ultra-120 EXTREME

[Stephen C]

I would just go through the components and eliminate them one by one, if you still have no luck try and source a different PSU to test it with.
The LED could still light up, depends what's busted in the PSU.
Same sorta thing happened to my system a while back and a replacement PSU solved the issue.

No smell of burning anywhere at all?

[wellmad]

thanks for the reply, no, there's no smell of burning and everything looks ok inside. I wasn't in the room when it went off, when I had a PSU go before it made an audible crack, but if it did crack i didn't hear it...

[Antagram]

Have you tried turning the wall sockets off to give it a rest?

I had a similar thing happen to an ancient PC, and it had two capacitors on the motherboard with a slightly pointed top, but that shouldn't be an issue for you with a newish PC.

[mikemikemi]

Well, could easily be the PSU, I bought a new PSU which would power all the motherboard lights but when I went to turn the PC on the fans would try and spin up then nothing.

If you can try another PSU.

[psu1]

I would 2nd trying a different PSU first.

[wellmad]

hey, thanks, will try PSU

[GT-R]

Try this test to see if its the psu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4

[wellmad]

wow, I wish i'd seen that video last night...

Ok, it's NOT the PSU, I bought a new one, put it in, but the problem remains...?

Its a modular PSU so I tried connecting just the mobo and a couple of fans, with RAM and Gcard in (no drives basically) but still nothing...

Also reseated RAM and Gcard

Its looking like either the mobo or CPU I guess?