PC shut off abruptly, now it wont turn on!

Elessar

I really need some help. I was playing Call of Duty 2 earlier tonight and right in the middle of a mission, the computer shut off suddenly and the power LED on the case started blinking.

Now I had had this happen before and all I did was pull the plug out, put it in a different socket and the computer booted up again. However this time, no matter where I plug it in, it just wont boot. Nothing happens at all. The socket is fine since other things like the modem are working and it cant be a fuse because the led blinked (plus I checked it). I dont thing its overheating as I just installed a new zalman heatsink and fan a few weeks back.

The computer is an amd 64 3200+ 1gb ram, 2 hard drives, geforce 6600gt, 300w psu. The most logical thing might be the psu, but is there any way to know for sure if its a problem?

Can anyone shed some light?

Orion

Elessar wrote:

The socket is fine since other things like the modem are working and it cant be a fuse because the led blinked (plus I checked it). I dont thing its overheating as I just installed a new zalman heatsink and fan a few weeks back.

What LED blinked? On the power strip? It could be the power lead itself - try the one from your kettle.

Or it could have overheated - did you use enough thermal paste? I had a problem with my vga card - I stuck an arctic cooler on it and while gaming it kept crashing with vga errors. Took off the cooler, applied lots of paste and put it back - no probs since.

Elessar

Macros42 wrote:

What LED blinked? On the power strip? It could be the power lead itself - try the one from your kettle.

Or it could have overheated - did you use enough thermal paste? I had a problem with my vga card - I stuck an arctic cooler on it and while gaming it kept crashing with vga errors. Took off the cooler, applied lots of paste and put it back - no probs since.

It was the power led that blinked, continuously. I'll try the kettle suggestion.

I'm pretty sure it wasnt overheating, I was keeping a close eye on the temps with speedfan (application) and the cpu never went above 48/9c on full load. Even if it was overheating, I would have been able to turn it back on or get some sort of life out of it when I pressed the power button.

Orion

That temp will cause no probs on any processor. If the power led is flashing it implies that some power is getting through so the lead is most likely ok. The fact that this has happened before does imply that something was on the way out and maybe has just given up now. The PSU would be the most likely suspect. Do you have a spare PC that you can borrow the psu from to test? If not, and if you're anywhere near Maynooth, I have an old 270W PSU that I could loan you to test it out.

rogue-entity

It sounds like it is your PSU, with all the gear you have in your machine I would not be surprised that it has failed. I have even less hardware and my PSU is a 350W, most people that I know with machines like yours have 450-550W PSUs.

You could try replacing it with one of a higher wattage and see what happens

LegacyUser

300 watt psu seems to be a complete dead giveaway!

SouperComputer

I recon PSU al well.

Have you tried reseating the ATX connector & resetting CMOS? Sometimes that can bring em back to life if they trip until the next time!

digitaldeath

I had the same problem and it was my PSU, but the whole motherboard fried too - so a new PSU did nothing!
At least everything else was alright.
So all you can really do is to try a better PSU, and if it still doesn't work - then it's your mobo - but seeing as the mobo has some life - you should be alright.

Digi.