HTPC won't start anymore help me diagnose

[willmg43]

Hey all took my old hardware after my 64 build and moved it to a Lascala case with a nice seasonic quiet 350W PSU.

It worked fine for about a month, then I traded my old huge Ti4400 for a smaller 5700LE to help airflow and since then I had stability issues where it would run fine for 15 minutes then the screen would die.

Now when I press Power all the fans spin up, PSU runs, cd drive makes a noise, but nothing come up on screen.

I am guessing one of two main things, HD problem, or my new vid card blew somehow(it was new, not refurbed)

I tried taking memory out in case that was it and put my ear near the HD, I hear something but it def isnt a lot and doesnt seem to be accessing.

Whats my best bet, buy a new drive pop it in and see? Anything else I should be considering?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Can't possibly be the HDD. A bad HDD (unless it's shorted) wouldn't prevent the computer from POSTing.

Could be anything else though: PSU, RAM, Mobo. Likeliest culprit is the PSU or the mobo. You have a spare PSU you can try?

Disconnect all ribbon cables and the reset button from the mobo. Pull all cards except the video card. See if it'll POST.

Check for bad capacitors. I've been seeing a lot of those lately: http://cquirke.mvps.org/badcaps.htm
Better photos here: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195

Hope this helps...

 

[willmg43]

Thanks for the suggestions, when I get i tonight I will swap out the PSU I ahve a generic CompUSA 400 I can try, if its not that I would guess its the CPU, the ram works in another comp and the vid card was running fine no artifacts or weird distortions when it would startup. PLus the CPU is nearly 4 years old and I had it OCed say maybe it burned out finally. I'll let you know what happens,

thanks for the response