Member Avatar for roryt

Hi everyone,

My computer has just completely died :scared:. I have posted another thread about this in the last few days (when it started happening) but it was just turning off and would turn back on again after a couple of seconds. I have had the computer for about 3 years so it seems strange it has suddenly started to happen.

Now it won't turn on at all. I have tried a fewdifferent things so far:

  1. Taking power plug out and leaving a few minutes, putting it back in and trying to turn it on again
  2. I started to unplug various things from the power supply (inc. both disc drives, hard drives, fans, floppy disk, memory card reader). At this point all external peripherals were unplugged
  3. Just testing the power output from the individual power lines out of the power supply: i got a reading of 3v on each pin

At all these points the system turns on, spins a fan round once and turns off again... just leaving the power supply on.

As you can tell, I have a feeling it is the power supply. I have tried to clean all the air ways as much as possible so there is no risk of over heating. Although something does seem to be getting hot, but i can't turn the pc on long enough to tell what it is.

This is my PC's spec:

  • Pentium 4 - 3.6ghz (with hyperthreading)
  • 4 Gig of ram
  • two 200gb hard disks
  • DVD writer and Cd Writer (2 drives)
  • Creative Audigy 2 Platinum sound card
  • Nvidia 6600GT graphics card
  • Power Suppy: Suntek st350bkp
  • It's running Windows XP media center (although it doesn't get that far before the problem starts).

The PC is sort of a custom made thing from Aries. I can't find anything about that particular power supply on the web. I would really like to avoid getting a new power supply unless I am completely sure that is the problem.

Anybody have any ideas as to what the problem might be?

I would really really appreciate your help on this one!

Any advice on what the best 350 watt power supply (not really most expensive!) would be... if that is definitely the problem.

Thanks in advance.

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Member Avatar for roryt

Have left PC over night. Tried turning it on again and it won't. So I am guessing that means it isn't over heating... because surely nothing can over heat in under a second (which is how long it stays on for).

I was thinking: could it be something on the motherboard failing which automatically turns the PC off?

Help! Please!!!

Member Avatar for roryt

It was a power supply problem. It had obviously decided enough was enough after 3 years of fairly hard use.

I just bought a new one for a fairly good price of £29.99 - much quieter than my old one, have a look: http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=221194

Member Avatar for caperjack

I was going to suggest power supply yesterday,decided not to !lol,
!just to add ,an AMD [and a intel to i think]cpu can over heat and fry in a second if you remove the heatsinc and fan .mine did older 1 gig chip

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