Self Build Suddenly DOA

Shred

My PC suddenly gave up the ghost recently, I came home one evening to find it wouldn't power on with absolutely no sign of life. During troubleshooting, I noticed a burning smell coming from within the case and, having initially suspected and ruled out the PSU (all tests passed with a multimeter) I stripped everything from the board and localised the smell to be coming from one of the onboard chips. I got another board (2nd hand but reportedly never used - it certainly looks new!) and I'm frustratingly still in the same position - absolutely nothing happens when I try to power it on and I'm a bit stumped at this point having treble checked all cables etc. There's no chasis speaker in the case and so I don't have the benefit of any diagnostic beeps; I did borrow a speaker but it was 5 pin when the socket on the board is 4! I've tried booting with bare components or with everything installed to no avail, the board (an ASrock Z97 anniversary) doesn't even have any power LEDs onboard. I don't have a spare CPU (i5 socket LGA1150) or another board to try so any advice on what my next steps should be would be appreciated, I suppose I can't rule out having overlooked something simple at this stage

Cordell

You can't rule out the PSU with a multimeter, you need to check it under load. By nothing happens you mean absolutely nothing including the PSU fan doesn't start to spin? Is it a good quality brand name PSU or a spurious one?

Shred

Thanks for the reply. It's a Corsair CX 600 and yes nothing happens when I flick the power switch at the back. However when I shorted pins 15 and 16 before testing with the multimeter the fan began to spin; I thought this was normal for some PSUs (i.e. the fan may not spin until a particular running time/temp is achieved)?

Cordell

Nothing should happen when you flick the switch at the back, the PSU starts by shorting those pins indeed. I would try another PSU before ruling this one as good.
As for the fan, I think this one is a classic/budget PSU that runs the fan all the time as it doubles as an exhaust fan for cases not having a dedicated one.

Shred

Cordell wrote: »

Nothing should happen when you flick the switch at the back, the PSU starts by shorting those pins indeed. I would try another PSU before ruling this one as good.
As for the fan, I think this one is a classic/budget PSU that runs the fan all the time as it doubles as an exhaust fan for cases not having a dedicated one.

Ok, I’ll try another PSU so, cheers!

harvindhillon

Hi,

if there was a short then more than a single component could be fried. When you said you smelled some burning smell from the motherboard, did you notice the motherboard light turn on?

You might have to test all your components one at a time unfortunately if you have the spare parts or if you can get a friend to help test on his.


Regards,
Harvinder

Shred

Sorry folks, I forgot about this one with everything that's going on. I did end up getting the PC to boot, well when I say boot I mean it would power on for approximately 62 seconds before powering off for approximately 4 and repeating without any display (even from the onboard GPU). I think it might possibly have been an incompatibility between the CPU and BIOS FW revision but I decided to abandon ship at that point and ordered new RAM/Mobo/CPU and rebuilt...it was probably about time I upgraded anyway.

Thanks for your suggestions though!