Computer keeps shutting down

blackrain

Golden Member
Feb 15, 2005
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I have an abit BD7 board and a P4 1.6ghz processor.

For the last couple of weeks the computer has been shutting down randomly. It usually happens when the pc has been on for a while and is being used. This weekend, I started a project of ripping all of my cd's to put on my new mp3 player. After ripping about 4-5 discs, the bios alarm goes off and then the pc proceeds to shut itself down (as opposed to just turning off). It does this consistently.

At first I thought it was the processor since the bios has an option to shut down if the cpu (or system???) temperature goes above 75 degrees (I think???)

The CPU fan is running fine. I took off the fan and cleaned out all the dust on the heatsink I cleaned the heatsink and cpu with isopropyl. Added a new drop of generic thermal compound. Just as I was putting everything back together and starting up the pc, I noticed that the fan on my Fortron psu is dead.

So is it the cpu or psu that is causing these random shut downs?

I need to buy a new psu anyway so I am going to order that for now, but not sure what to do if there is also a cpu problem.
 

henryay

Senior member
Aug 14, 2002
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If that fan was dead for a long time, the PSU could have overheated causing some of the components (capacitors especially) to "age" quicker, which would slowly kill the PSU. Thats my guess.
 

blackrain

Golden Member
Feb 15, 2005
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Originally posted by: henryay
If that fan was dead for a long time, the PSU could have overheated causing some of the components (capacitors especially) to "age" quicker, which would slowly kill the PSU. Thats my guess.

So the random shutdowns could be caused by the psu's dead fan?
 

henryay

Senior member
Aug 14, 2002
293
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It could be, are you sure it is dead? Maybe it's just not spinning because it's not hot enough. Is the PSU hot or cold?
 

Slugbait

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,633
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It's not unusual for a PSU fan to be still, if it doesn't need to push air.

Check the GPU fan as well, I've seen several machines have a similar issue (including one with my old Ti200) because of a dead GPU fan.
 

blackrain

Golden Member
Feb 15, 2005
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Originally posted by: henryay
It could be, are you sure it is dead? Maybe it's just not spinning because it's not hot enough. Is the PSU hot or cold?

Positive. The fan is always spinning. The psu is hot.
 

blackrain

Golden Member
Feb 15, 2005
1,226
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Originally posted by: Slugbait
It's not unusual for a PSU fan to be still, if it doesn't need to push air.

Check the GPU fan as well, I've seen several machines have a similar issue (including one with my old Ti200) because of a dead GPU fan.

GPU fan is fine.