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need a little help please with diagnosis of failing hardware

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  • 29-06-2019 1:20pm
    #1
    irishgrover
    Registered Users Posts: 2,496 ✭✭✭


    Hi all,
    I've an old but important pc.
    It was turned off for a couple of weeks (on holidays) and refused to turn on for my wife on return. Would power up for a sec and then close down.
    I opened it up, dusted it down and then it can back to life and would boot up for a few minutes and then shut down again. After doing this a couple of times it went back to instantaneous shut down post attempted start up
    I suspected that chip was overheating and shutting off.
    So I took off heat sink, processor, cleaned and reapplied thermal paste.
    However it has not made a different.
    In addition I've physically disconnected all HDs, graphics card, and other modules, without any impact.
    My conclusion is that the processor is fried.
    However don't want to replace it to find out motherboard or power supply is the actual source of problem....
    Am I missing anything, any suggestions etc?
    Thanks in dvance


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    #2
    TerrorFirmer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 29,930 ✭✭✭✭TerrorFirmer


    Most likely power supply or motherboard. Does sound like a classic case of CPU overheating but if you've ruled that out, it's most likely to be the other two.

    Also worth removing all ram sticks and trying one by one to rule out some issue there.

    Depends on how old it is, but it's probably more economical to just replace it, these days you can get a 2nd hand i5 machine with 8GB of ram and an SSD for 150 on Ebay.

    If there's importance info to be retrieved, you can connect your HDD as a storage drive to another PC.


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    #3
    irishgrover
    Registered Users Posts: 2,496 ✭✭✭irishgrover


    Ok, so i've discovered the following
    1. If I remove the 8pin cable for CPU then power stays on
    2. I then replaced the CPU but had identical problem

    So my next dilemma is.... Is the problem with the power or with the MoBo.
    I'm suspecting motherboard, but really don't have a clue...
    Welcoming suggestions or comments


  • Options
    #4
    Metric Tensor
    Registered Users Posts: 3,724 ✭✭✭Metric Tensor


    (This is EXTREMELY unlikely but I thought I'd post it just in case)


    I remember installing a processor waaaaaay back in the day (it may have been a Q6600 or some such) and in the particular motherboard configuration in question it required either 6 or 4 rather than 8 pins of the power cable to operate. To enable this set up the power cable was split into two sections - only one of which you used for the processor in question even though the mobo had eight inputs.

    This would not solve your original problem but is there a possibility the power cable was installed differently before the clean out?


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