Did the removalists break my cabinet or was it me?

[rabidpuppy]

Hiho,

So I built a cabinet in 2009, all good, pictures and specifics at end of this.  Now over the last year hasn't had any use, and I moved house at the start of December just gone.  It was a rush, and I didn't think to turn it on to check it was working 100% before it got moved.   The move went fine, and I have only just finished unpacking and got rid of the stuff stacked in front of the cabinet, and thought to try it.

It powered on, and got the pc bios screen, the buttons that have leds all came on, but then it shutdown, and restarted itself. This repeated itself and just kept doing it.     I guess that's the issue here.  I tried plugging it into a standard powerboard, a different wall outlet, and also tried a different PSU (just swapped out the motherboard power, didn't go the the length of plugging in all the hard drives, fans, lights etc).  Same thing. Powers up, shutsdown and restarts. 

Since I isolated it down to just the motherboard being powered, I'm guessing faulty motherboard/cpu/ram.  But, I built this 4 years ago. Didn't make extensive notes for myself.  I would literally rather but a new motherboard & cpu and & ram than try and troubleshoot what I built.  I figure a new cheap m/b etc would be more powerful than the 4 year old one anyway.  (True? Please be true).

This is what's inside (according to the invoice I kept, cos I really don't remember these details)

CPU: Intel Core2-Duo E8400 3.0GHZ 1333FSB 6MB
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3R P45 4xD3
Ram: Corsair 2x1GB 1333Mhz C9 Twinx DDR3
Video: 512MB Gigabyte 4670 D3 R467D3
PSU: (Not 100%, but as pictured) Coolmaster Centurion V 460W

PC plugged into a smart strip powerboard. Have 2 120mm fans, and some lighting, but I'm hoping someone either can confirm my motherboard suspicions, or perhaps one of the pictures will be a pointer of what I could check.   It sounds stupid but after 4 years it's like I'm not looking at something I put together.  Perhaps the removalists knocked something out of place, or maybe it was like this before they touched it.

Yes, I do feel like a dick for being so stupid / careless / negligent / forgetful. 

http://imageshack.us/g/1/9977105/


 

[ark_ader]

just unplug everything, remove the memory and the heatsink/processor (good time to apply new paste) and reseat everything in and you should be good to go.  I had this same problem on transAtlantic shipmements and found that the PC connections just shifted.

[jammin0]

I second the above suggestion. If ram or CPU came loose it could be doing this.  Also sometimes heat sinks come loose and then it will power for a few seconds, get too hot, thermal protection kicks in and restarts.

[BobA]

Try booting with everything unplugged except 1 ram stick.  Then try it again with the other ram stick.  I just had a single ram stick go bad and it kept the computer from booting up. 

[lilshawn]

wait wait wait wait WAIT!

Perhaps the removalists knocked something out of place, or maybe it was like this before they touched it.

Have you not even opened up the computer to see if maybe the heat sink has gotten knocked off?! sounds to me like the motherboard may be expecting a tach signal from the fan, and not getting it, is shutting down. (had this happen before, got a wire jammed in the cpu cooler)

[jammin0]

He mentioned earlier that he tried a 2nd PSU so I assume he's had a look at it.

[lilshawn]

alrighty, fair enough

i'd swap the fan plugs around, take a chassis fan and plug it into the cpu header and power it up. (make sure the cpu fan is still powered.)

[WindDrake]

You have the same motherboard that I do in my main rig. This board has a known weird fluke with the older bios.

Remove all the ram except 1 stick, it must be in Slot 1.

Power the PC up. It'll fire right up. Go into BIOS setup. Save and Exit.

Power off, install the rest of the ram. Then update your BIOS when you're back in Windows.

[lilshawn]

This board has a known weird fluke with the older bios.

yeeek! I hope they updated it. 

[WindDrake]

This board has a known weird fluke with the older bios.

yeeek! I hope they updated it. 

Yep, it's fixed in the newer ones.

[rabidpuppy]

Okay great!  Thanks for the suggestions. It's like 40 degrees (Celsius) right now, probably 50 in my Bungalow where the cabinet is, so will get in there perhaps this weekend when it's cooler.

Yes I did previously get in there and check things out with an ocular patdown. CPU fan is working.  Tried swapping ram but will try again with just one stick as above.  Will get some new heatsink paste and try that also. 

As I did not actually see the removalists move it into my new place (I was directing from the old place), it's quite possible they gave things a bumpy ride.  I made it out of 18mm MDF and its a tiny bit heavy. 

[rabidpuppy]

Ok, it was the heatsink!  It actually looked fine and felt firmly in place, and the fan was still working.  But since I happened to have a spare unused intel heatsink with the same connectors, thought I would try it first.

I guess the movers did some heavy bumping and one of those springy leg things got loosened or damaged to create a gap between the heatsink and cpu. In the course of me taking it out I broke one of them so that must have been the bad one.

All working ok now.  Everything in in pieces so at least have been re-motivated to learn how I wired it all up, and got 2 new 2TB drives for updating roms (and storing my psx and cube isos non-zipped for better load times).

Thanks all!

[lilshawn]

awesome, glad to see you running again. And a cheap fix to boot!

i was never a fan of those intel coolers. seems like a really flimsy setup. AMD has got them there.