PC is a mess :( Would greatly appreciate help..

A few weeks ago, my PC gave out. First it gave out from Legend of Grimrock, which caused my VGA to completely run out of control and the PC itself shut down for a few days before it boot back up. We thought the VGA just overheated the system and it would do just that. We had another PC that had a similar history so we figured it would happen.

A few weeks later, the PC again shut down, probably from an issue of overheating I thought, and didn't turn back on. So we poked the PC a bit and figured that most likely it was a dead PSU because it would refuse to turn on, or even blink lights. It also was a 500w PSU (we had a Radeon 6850, and only now, 9 months after we built this PC, did we realize it was way too low a wattage). Again, the last PC was also fixed with a new PSU, so nothing new.

So we finally ordered a 700w Apevia power supply from Newegg, and we replaced all the plugs. The machine turned on, but didn't post. There were no beeps, the monitor was not showing anything, and well, it was unnatural. So now we don't really know if our mobo, CPU or whatever part fried as well. We decided to replace the CMOS battery since it wasn't turned on in weeks, but it still didn't post.

So when we removed connections from the HD, the optical drives, and left it down to the motherboard, the PSU, and a stick of RAM to attempt to boot it up. Both the 24 pin and the 4 pin were both connected to the mobo.

The PSU flashed a sec, but it refused to even power. We put the CPU back in (because that was the last thing we took out when it was still powering things), and nope, still the same problem. The PSU was doing this too earlier when we didn't correctly plug in the 4 pin ATX to the board (we were using the 6 pin instead of the 8 pin -_-) but eventually when we fixed it, it went ahead and powered on with no post.

So now I don't know what to do. Any suggestions? Did we get a DOA PSU? Or is our mobo fried

Thanks for the help in advance.

Specs:

SAPPHIRE 100315L Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

Antec EarthWatts EA-500D Green 500W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply (DEAD. now replaced with an Apevia 700w PSU)

Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX

MSI 760GM-P35 AM3 AMD 760G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

**Also, I'm sorry for the generic title. It just really is a mess, I don't know what the problem is anymore ._.

**Thank you for the move. Sorry you had to go through the trouble >.>

Try to boot up with No RAM if you heard POST beeps codes than its not the Motherboard Have you move or replace the CPU recently. Please make sure that the CPU is phyically connected on the Motherboard. I did this once.

What POST checks first is the Memory If it has no memory it will beep at you. If memory is present than the it looks for the CPU if the CPU is present than it will check VGA and etc, etc

In order to check the PSU to check it you need to have a load on it and then read the individual pins becaeful of this suggestion you are teesting live voltages from a multimeter and compared the reselts from the multi-metter to the sticker on the PSU (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/power-supply-test-multimeter.htm)

Hope that helps you out

I'll attempt doing that tonight, but the PSU won't even light up is the thing. I don't even know how to get it to work again ._.

If you have no success than I recommended DOA and returning it. If you had a spare you can try that. Power supply are the most difficult part to troubleshoot.

The only problem with that is that it did power up the entire mobo at some point... Though I did hear sometimes that PSUs can power the machine but not enough to boot..

If I'm understanding you you put a 6 pin PCI-e power plug into the 8 Pin CPU power socket? Where you could use either a 8 pin or a 4 pin?

The PSU flashed a sec, but it refused to even power. We put the CPU back in (because that was the last thing we took out when it was still powering things), and nope, still the same problem. The PSU was doing this too earlier when we didn't correctly plug in the 4 pin ATX to the board (we were using the 6 pin instead of the 8 pin -_-) but eventually when we fixed it, it went ahead and powered on with no post.

This could be bad news as I have pulled a 4 pin to 8 pin adapter I have and compared it to the 6 pin PCI-e video card power plug and the polarities appear to be reversed between them. Just to double check, If you look at them on the power supply I'll bet the black and yellow are reversed from one to the other. modern day electronics do not like reversed polarities.

Good Luck
Roger

If I'm understanding you you put a 6 pin PCI-e power plug into the 8 Pin CPU power socket? Where you could use either a 8 pin or a 4 pin?

The PSU flashed a sec, but it refused to even power. We put the CPU back in (because that was the last thing we took out when it was still powering things), and nope, still the same problem. The PSU was doing this too earlier when we didn't correctly plug in the 4 pin ATX to the board (we were using the 6 pin instead of the 8 pin -_-) but eventually when we fixed it, it went ahead and powered on with no post.

This could be bad news as I have pulled a 4 pin to 8 pin adapter I have and compared it to the 6 pin PCI-e video card power plug and the polarities appear to be reversed between them. Just to double check, If you look at them on the power supply I'll bet the black and yellow are reversed from one to the other. modern day electronics do not like reversed polarities.

Good Luck
Roger

Whoa wait a sec, does that mean my mobo probably shorted out? The thing was that after we put in the correct 4/8 pin, the circuit did seem to work. Only now when we tried to disconnect everything to barebone it to see if we could rule out what would be the issue with the posting, the PSU didn't want to work :/

Either of which way, I plan to RMA this PSU (it's an OEM, so I'm kind of hesitant now if it's really working out of the box), and if the replacement doesn't fix it.. Most likely some other party fried. I'll keep this posted, thanks for the help so far guys!

Hi,
Well it is hard to tell what is bad.
A Power supply usually has circuitry that will shut it off if it detects a overload.
Without video it isn't really working. It could be the power supply or the motherboard or some other part at this point in time.

Testing will be needed. Good Power supply, pull the motherboard and sit it on a wooden surface being careful to keep yourself grounded to avoid damage from static electricity.
Test with just memory and video card if not built-in and the power supply.

Good Luck
Roger