PC Troubleshooting Help Please

[Lazien]

Hello everyone and thanks for any advice you can give.

Yesterday I played some games on my pc and turned it off to goto sleep. Today I tried to turn it on and it wouldn't power up. I tried about everything I can think of to figure it out and now I'm asking the experts.

Here's A list of what I tried and the result:
1. Checked power cords/breakers/fuses/power strip all fine.
2. Jumpered out the power switch on the motherboard to see if the power switch was at fault.
3. Tested PSU (Antec true power 480W) with a tester and it checked out fine...I then installed it into another pc to put a load on it and that pc worked just fine.
4. I took out the 4 sticks of Twinx ram in My Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe mother board and started swapping them in different configurations to see if I could find a bad stick or not.
5. I then removed every single cable and card from the MB and tried to power it up with just the cpu/ram and it still would not power up, but I do see the green "power" led on so I am assuming it's getting power.
6. Just for kicks to put my 7800GTX into another pc and it too worked fine.

So here is my question, is there anyway I can test my motherboard further without just buying another one to see if it's the culprit? Also, is there a way to test a cpu without buying another one and swapping it out? Even knowing it's been over a year since I made this box, it's still expensive to buy an A8n-sli or FX-55 if I dont need it.

System spec's:
AMD FX-55 939
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
2 GIG DDR3200 corsair twinx
WD Raptor 74gig
Plextor PX-716AL
Antec Truepower 480W

Thanks for any and all help guys,

Lazien

 

[wanderer27]

Any Fans or Beeps?

Right off I suspect your MB as I lost mine a few months ago.


Good News:

You have a three year warranty on your MB, so you can RMA it through ASUS.


Bad News:

It took about three weeks or so to get my MB back, and they ended up sending a new one, so on that account I'm glad I went ahead and bought a new one before RMAing.

 

[Lazien]

No beeps or any fan motion....the only reason I think it's getting power is the green led is on and I can hear that high pitched noise from component power down when I pull power

 

[imported_RedStar]

pretty thorough testing...and it does seem to point a MB failure.
My contribution to this thread: local computer dealers in your area could diagnose it for you. Mine do it for just 15$ cdn. This way, you would be sure it was the MB and then you can RMA it.

 

[Lazien]

I was just thinking that same thing Redstar but was wondering how much it would set me back. But, for $15 I'm gonna start making some phone calls

I just hope it is the motherboard and not the cpu since that sucker still costs like $350+

On the bright side, if it is the cpu I guess it will give me a reason to upgrade to that core 2 duo system I've been eyeing


Lazien

 

[mechBgon]

Maybe your case's actual power-button switch is faulty. Try making a momentary electrical connection between the motherboard's ATX_PWR pins (the ones the case's Power Button wire would ordinarily go on) with a metal object. Any good?

 

[Lazien]

That was the 2nd thing I tried Mechbgon.

 

[mechBgon]

Ooops, I missed that. What if you remove everything including the CPU, all the RAM and the video card, and try powering up the bare motherboard? If your PSU fan spins up in that situation, indicating that the motherboard powered up, then maybe the CPU is the faulty part. You could score a cheap Socket939 CPU to test with, if you weren't in a big hurry.

 

[KGB]

Have you tried clearing the CMOS?

I didn't see that listed in your troubleshooting.

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: Lazien
I was just thinking that same thing Redstar but was wondering how much it would set me back. But, for $15 I'm gonna start making some phone calls

I just hope it is the motherboard and not the cpu since that sucker still costs like $350+

On the bright side, if it is the cpu I guess it will give me a reason to upgrade to that core 2 duo system I've been eyeing


Lazien

Actually you can get it for about $130 shipped right now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103526

 

[Lazien]

Damn nice find Wanderer27....I might just buy another one and use it to test my rig

 

[Lazien]

I was under the impression MechBgon that a mother board wouldn't post without a cpu and ram so I didn't try that. But I will now....and I will also clear the CMOS KGBMan and see if that helps.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Lazien
I was under the impression MechBgon that a mother board wouldn't post without a cpu and ram so I didn't try that. But I will now....and I will also clear the CMOS KGBMan and see if that helps.

You're correct, it won't POST, and if it did, you wouldn't know it since it will have no video card either. But will it power up, as a bare board with no anything installed, is the question. If removing the CPU lets the motherboard power up, then it could be that the CPU is toast. Were you doing any bleeding-edge OC'ing or anything?