Advice of deficient part

[EvilCabal]

Hello,

my pc has been behaving strangely for some time and now it got to the point where it does not even boot anymore. Problem is that with the symptoms I have I'm having a hard time guessing what is wrong. I'll try to be as precise as possible

PC is a PIV 3.2Ghz with an Asus P5AD2 Motherboard, 1gig of ram (2 x 512). 1 200gig Sata HD and 2 raid 1 160gig IDE hd, all Western Digital. Video Card is ATI PCI express x700 pro and power supply is a 380W from Antec.

1 symptom : The pc randomly reboots. It does not overheat.
2 symptom : When I boot I sometime get the message saying boot failure, insert proper boot media and hit a key (their is no floppy / bootable cd in the pc). After a few reset it usually works.

3 symptom : The pc starts but does nothing at all (the fan spins and all but the screen never shows up dans nothing is going on.

4 symptom : I ran an hardware test on my pc, one of my ram chip seems to be defective so I take it out of the pc. The pc boot once properly, then does symptom 3 all the time. I put back the memory in (because I'm not sure if they need to be in as a pair).

5 symptom : Now my pc does not boot at all (but the fan spins and the power is on), and my cpu fan, an almost new Zalman AlCu, does not spin at all... It is plugged properly.

What the hell is going on? Is it my power supply, my Motherboard or something else?

Thanks

If you need any more info just ask!

 

[PyroTyger]

Sounds like you've nailed the problem right there. If the reboots were happening during periods of heavy load, suspect #1 would be the power supply. You don't appear to have an exceptionally power-hungry system, but three hard-drives and a graphics card plus assorted peripherals may over-stretch a PSU rated for 380W (rarely an accurate figure).

However, with such a varied range of problems, the mobo could easily be at fault. This is not the first thing to try as it's a pain to swap out for diagnosis, but if changing the PSU doesn't make any difference then I'd suspect this.

Before you try anything, remove all unnecessary hardware - graphics card if you have onboard, all perihperals but mouse, keyboard & monitor, and expansion cards you don't need, and especially the previously reported faulty RAM module - as this will help to eliminate other hardware faults. If you can get it running and stable, add the hardware back a piece at a time, and again I'd be wary of the RAM. Bear in mind that if removing all this stuff makes the system stable, it could be be one of those things, but it could also be an underpowered PSU, or some dodgy tracks on the motherboard.

Good luck...

 

[EvilCabal]

Thanks, that's unfortunately the answer I expected Sounds like their is no way to figure out the exact problem without testing with extra parts. I already unplugged most of the stuff without result... But the fact that the fan does not spin, even with the hard drives and cd/dvd player unplugged, can it really be a power supply problem?

Thank you for the quick answer!

Fred

 

[ceh4702]

My bet is power supply 380 watt may not enough with a good video card. I have had some people claim at some point in time Antec sometimes had problems with their power supplies. Normally they make very good power supplies. Antec power supplies is all I have used for years. However, this may go back once again to bad capaciters. All it takes is one bad supplier to mess your production line up. Sometimes the power supply just gives up or has barely enough power supply and dies slowly over time. Whatever the problem, power supplies can give up.

Memory can appear bad if you dont have enough power.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[EvilCabal]

I don't believe it's a power supply problem. The CPU fan is ok now (it was a loose wire, my bad) But I unplugged everything I could and still nothing (The components receive power but the computer does not boot). The motherboard is still under warranty so I will "simply" change it. If it turns out it was something else I'll let you know.

Thanks again.

Fred