StageLeft
No Lifer
*SOLVED*
Thanks for all the ideas and myocardia for first bringing to my attention the possibility of the PSU being bad. I thought it a real stretch, I'll be honest, but I will never again preach the adequacy of a cheap PSU. I guess I should check in BIOS to see whether my mobo is going with bad voltages, but I highly doubt it. I expect this current powersource to run fine. What a cheap piece of crap the other one was! Now to see if I can get these people to return it. I told the tech that I was ocing (oops!), but a mildly overclocked cpu should really not overstress a so-called 350 W powersupply. My new PSU is about twice as heavy as that other one.
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Background: 3 weeks ago I bought a Barton 2500+. I had problems getting it to overclock properly. I later narrowed these down to an exceptionally poor HSF grease application (I was using the stock stuff, and when I took the HSF on Sunday I found literally parts of the CPU that were bare from grease). I put some coolermaster grease on last night, which took the full load temp down by around 8 celcius, and let me clock this up to 200 FSB with total stability at 1.725.
However, later in the evening with P95 running and me listening to some music and typing out a message my computer shut down. No beeps, no nothing. Just shut down. I immediately tried to reboot and about 3 seconds in to the reboot process it shut down again. The system is now lifeless. Whenever I try and turn it on I get a flicker of life to the mobo (NF7-S) (like the optical outlet), and the CPU fan spins for a fraction of a second, and that's it.
I did notice a mild burning smell right after the system died last night. The CPU visually looks fine, but I guess I killed it didn't I? Note that the thing was definitely running under 54 celcius at the time (since I have an alarm to go off if it hits that). There were no Prime 95 errors. I simply had a system shutdown and a burning smell.
I guess I damaged the CPU with the poor cooling it was having from the three weeks prior 🙁
Well, now on to a mobile 2500+.
*UPDATE* Myocardia also suspected PSU. I ran home at lunch and grabbed it and brought it into the store to have it tested. The guy confirmed that it doesn't work. He said that "the fan won't even spin". Remember it does work a bit, since the mobo lights do shine. He said that he was almost certain that my mobo had short circuited and had caused the PSU to go bad. Thusly, I would not get a refund on my PSU. I suspect that this is not the case, so I went to Compusa and paid $60 (listed at $69 but the price on the shelf was wrong, so I got it at that. Newegg sells for $50) (my generic was $20) for an Antec 350W PSU. I know I can get better online but I can't wait for this to come in the mail. I will try it later.
Question: Is there a chance that my mobo killed itself and, in turn, killed the PSU? Since the mobo lights do work and it does try to turn itself on I'm led to suspect that the PSU has a failsafe in it that says that if its fan doesn't spin it won't do anything, and that's probably why it's not powering up. Or, maybe not the fan - maybe it can only trickle power, and the main unit in it is buggared.
Anyway, if the PSU is the only cause of concern here I guess my history of using generic PSUs has caught up with me, and I'll consider it a lesson learned. I will also need to get my money back! Is that PSU I bought any good in terms of what is likely to be available locally? Some store, for $40, had Antec ones in plain old boxes, but this one is the Smartblue with the pretty blue LEDs.
Thanks for all the ideas and myocardia for first bringing to my attention the possibility of the PSU being bad. I thought it a real stretch, I'll be honest, but I will never again preach the adequacy of a cheap PSU. I guess I should check in BIOS to see whether my mobo is going with bad voltages, but I highly doubt it. I expect this current powersource to run fine. What a cheap piece of crap the other one was! Now to see if I can get these people to return it. I told the tech that I was ocing (oops!), but a mildly overclocked cpu should really not overstress a so-called 350 W powersupply. My new PSU is about twice as heavy as that other one.
--
Background: 3 weeks ago I bought a Barton 2500+. I had problems getting it to overclock properly. I later narrowed these down to an exceptionally poor HSF grease application (I was using the stock stuff, and when I took the HSF on Sunday I found literally parts of the CPU that were bare from grease). I put some coolermaster grease on last night, which took the full load temp down by around 8 celcius, and let me clock this up to 200 FSB with total stability at 1.725.
However, later in the evening with P95 running and me listening to some music and typing out a message my computer shut down. No beeps, no nothing. Just shut down. I immediately tried to reboot and about 3 seconds in to the reboot process it shut down again. The system is now lifeless. Whenever I try and turn it on I get a flicker of life to the mobo (NF7-S) (like the optical outlet), and the CPU fan spins for a fraction of a second, and that's it.
I did notice a mild burning smell right after the system died last night. The CPU visually looks fine, but I guess I killed it didn't I? Note that the thing was definitely running under 54 celcius at the time (since I have an alarm to go off if it hits that). There were no Prime 95 errors. I simply had a system shutdown and a burning smell.
I guess I damaged the CPU with the poor cooling it was having from the three weeks prior 🙁
Well, now on to a mobile 2500+.
*UPDATE* Myocardia also suspected PSU. I ran home at lunch and grabbed it and brought it into the store to have it tested. The guy confirmed that it doesn't work. He said that "the fan won't even spin". Remember it does work a bit, since the mobo lights do shine. He said that he was almost certain that my mobo had short circuited and had caused the PSU to go bad. Thusly, I would not get a refund on my PSU. I suspect that this is not the case, so I went to Compusa and paid $60 (listed at $69 but the price on the shelf was wrong, so I got it at that. Newegg sells for $50) (my generic was $20) for an Antec 350W PSU. I know I can get better online but I can't wait for this to come in the mail. I will try it later.
Question: Is there a chance that my mobo killed itself and, in turn, killed the PSU? Since the mobo lights do work and it does try to turn itself on I'm led to suspect that the PSU has a failsafe in it that says that if its fan doesn't spin it won't do anything, and that's probably why it's not powering up. Or, maybe not the fan - maybe it can only trickle power, and the main unit in it is buggared.
Anyway, if the PSU is the only cause of concern here I guess my history of using generic PSUs has caught up with me, and I'll consider it a lesson learned. I will also need to get my money back! Is that PSU I bought any good in terms of what is likely to be available locally? Some store, for $40, had Antec ones in plain old boxes, but this one is the Smartblue with the pretty blue LEDs.
