Question Sandy Bridge Dell malfunction, orange blinking power led on front, orange led on mobo, swapped in new psu, clear fault code?? (solved? mainboard?)

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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I'm not an expert on Dell units. It's a sandy bridge, 3010 I think.

Orange LEDs, blinking on front power led, solid on mobo. Swapped in new PSU. What do you all think? Do I just need to clear the error so it will attempt to boot? How?

Tried swapping RAM around, same thing. Tried removing GTX 1650 GDDR 6 model, same thing.

Edit:

Looks like mainboard?
 
Last edited:

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
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If it's a common one, maybe. It depends on how badly you need it to work!

I have 3 Dell Sandys still in operation... I'm fixing to retire them. 8+ years out of a prebuilt rig is pretty good, but both the mobo and CPU are a little long in the tooth.

For what it's worth... I still have 2 i5 2500K rigs running, including one as a daily driver. Even though they were assembled with premium components, and have been upgraded over the years, if they started going wonky, I wouldn't hesitate to take them out of service... they are both 9 years old, for Heaven's sake. This includes, BTW, my first ever build... a 2500K I bought on Black Friday, 2011... it turns 10 years old next week! That was a pretty good $150 investment!
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
55,152
9,204
126
I hear ya. I too am wary of the potential lack of longevity of any replacement Sandy Dell mobos or systems, as they are nearing the 10-year-old mark. Sure, some specimens will live on longer, but not all of them.

I'm getting a Skylake i5-6600 HP ProDesk MT desktop refurb to replace the Sandy i5-2400 Dell rig, should have more longevity ahead of it, and should be maybe 30-35% faster in games, with DDR4-2666 as well. Best of all, it was only mildly more expensive ($150 on ebay). I'll have to supply a 16GB kit of RAM for my friend as well, which is another $50 or so, but that's not a problem.

This should make a nice re-build of his gaming PC.
 
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