is my power supply killing my compy

R

rabbitflinger

New Member
i recently got a computer from my brother that was working for the first couple hours then shut off and i havnt been able to get it to work since my dad figures its the power supply cuz when i turned it off for a couple of mineuts then turned it back on the lights and fans went on for about a second then shut off pls help me somebody
 
Could well be a board failure! The description matches a bad cap or bios eprom chip on the board itself when seeing the immediate shutoff.

I ran into that with a 3 day old board when first putting this build together. Everything ran fine those first 3 days and then instant shutoff after just about 2-3 seconds seeing that board returned fast. That's the item to be looking at the most there.
 
best way to check would be if you had a spare psu handy, if not you might have to borrow one, otherwise it could be either
 
For the most part a failed supply would either not even come on or at least to post and then be pulled down during the tests there. You can certainly go ahead and rule out the supply if you have another to try there. But the instant switch off strongly points at the board generally.
 
honestly this could just be a shot in the dark but if you pull out the cord on the psu and try to touch all three of the pins at the same with your finger you'll disapate the left over current caught up in the psu, its happened to me a couple of times and it actually works when you can't find anything wrong. You shouldn't feel a jolt or anything at all but this method does seem very. . . crude, so wait for an expert to confirm that's its ok to try it. The power gets pull through you and not any other components so there shouldn't be any problems, i just don't want to be help responsible for breaking anything further. All i'm sayin it's worked for me when nothing else would although i was trying it on an older comp with a 300 watt psu, i'm betting newer psu's have protection from keeping current locked up but, you never know.
 
The method used for older supplies was called "recycling" there. You would first turn off the breaker switch if there was one before unplugging the ac cord.

Once that was done you would simply turn the breaker back on if one was present and proceed to press the power button for the system itself. Essentially you would be discharging the caps inside the supply itself.
 
I have seen lots of power supplies that wont let the system post, I've even seen one that made the light on the front flash!

If you have another computer put it along side the other one and plug the power supply into the board on yours (don't really need to plug all the drives in) and if it works its the power supply.
 
Often many will simply pull the entire board out and place it on a non conductive surface only seeing the cpu, memory, video card actually plugged in along with the supply to see if there's a ground problem of some type. That would be another thought if a second supply sees the same problems in order to rule out one or the other.
 
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