Question After PSU died, I replaced it and now my PC won't boot.

[KaptainCharles]

I was on my computer one night, went to bed after thinking I shut it down. When I get up in the morning it's there at the windows logo screen with the circle dots spinning. I shut it down, reboot and it's in an infinite boot. I get into BIOS and notice that the HDD (has no windows on it) has been set to first boot rather than SSD with windows. I set that, no dice; infinite boot.

After shutting down again after unplugging HDDs to force it to boot from SSD, the case fans turn on but it won't boot at all. Shut down again, then nothing would power on. Shut down again then the GPU connected to the PSU didn't even have its light on so then I was sure the PSU had died.

Old PSU was a Corsair CX750M which had a 3 year warranty and died at 4 years of constant use.

Just bought an EVGA 750 from amazon with 5 year warranty.


I buy that PSU, plug in, the connection of the 24 pin to the mobo (MSI z97 PC mate [the blue one] which i cant seem to find sold anywhere anymore) seems a bit loose and I have to really force it in to get a solid fit. Never hear a satisfying click either.

I try boot computer and case fans flash, cpu fan spins for 0,5 seconds and I hear a "tss" sound (which I have assumed to be a fan trying to start up. The computer then does nothing. If I press power again no lights, but if I pull power cord out, hold power then put it back in and try again, lights flash but no boot.

Could the PSU have taken down anything there? I sometimes try to boot with no RAM and get mixed results as to if I get light flash or none at all. Improperly seated RAM gives me no light flash, all RAM sticks individually at some point gave me light flash. What can I do? Is my MOBO dead or my CPU?

Edit: The "tsss" sound is coming from the PSU

Specs:

Mobo: MSI Z97 PC Mate.
RAM: Hyper X Fury x4 4GB DDR3 1866Mhz CL10
CPU: Intel i5 4690k
GPU: Asus Strix GTX970
Boot SSD: Samsung 1TB QVO
HDDs: WD 1TB & 2TB
CPU fan: Coolermaster 212

Any help much appreciated. I'm hoping there's something I haven't tried. I've taken out CMOS battery but nothing. No damage on board at least that I can tell.

I'm at the stage where I'm thinking I'm gonna be forced into upgrading to a new mobo and ddr4 ram.

 

[Ralston18]

Use the respective User Guides/Manuals for the PSU and Motherboard to ensure that all connections are correct.

From your post:

"I buy that PSU, plug in, the connection of the 24 pin to the mobo (MSI z97 PC mate [the blue one] which i cant seem to find sold anywhere anymore) seems a bit loose and I have to really force it in to get a solid fit. Never hear a satisfying click either."

Not a good sign. New connections can be difficult but real force should not be needed.

Power down, unplug, open the case and take a very close look at the plug and host motherboard connection.

Use a bright flashlight and a careful examination to check the connections and all around.

Especially the 24 pin connection (JPWR1) on the motherboard. Look all around for signs of a problem.

If there is some looseness you may be able to spot some physical problem: socket, pin, wire.....

Likewise some component bent, brown or black (burned), swollen (capacitors), twisted, metal touching metal between components.

 

[Aeacus]

Corsair CXm series, at best, are mediocre quality units and i wouldn't use them. Also, without knowing the model of your EVGA unit, i can't say that it's any better from your Corsair unit.

As far as what may be wrong; when PSU blows, it has the magical ability to fry everything it's connected to. Basically your entire PC, and due to that "ability", PSU is the most important component in the PC and the only component not to cheap out on. Good and great quality PSUs (e.g anything made by Seasonic) are so well built that when they pop, they don't bring any other components with them (though, there is always a chance but it's very slim). Cheaper PSUs, like Corsair CX series, have far higher chance to bring something with them when they go sky high.

That being said, you can do the hardware checks described above but as far as your description goes, what you're looking at is either: dead CPU or dead RAM or dead MoBo or dead GPU or all of them dead.

 

[KaptainCharles]

x

x

Thank you for both of your replies. It's an EVGA 750 GQ, bought from this link; https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B017RO39TK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I did a paperclip test and found that the fan spins on this unit at least so this PSU is working from at least a very rudimentary standpoint.

In terms of connections Ralston I felt with my finger for gaps between the 24pin socket and the connector itself and pushed it until it was tight.

I'd actually folded cardboard, put it behind the board whilst pushing it in as I was worried the amount of pressure it was requiring would bend the board so much. Not sure how it takes that much work though, shouldn't all this be standardised? Other PSU 24pin took some pressure too. Maybe I bought a low quality board.

Could this mean the end of my SSD & HDDs too? I sent an email to a local computer place enquiring about any services they might offer to check parts. From what I'm gathering though worst case scenario is anything hooked up to that PSU could be dead.

I know from the very minimum that the new PSU can power the GPU through the light, so I'm not sure if it being fried would stop that light from turning on or not? Never experienced anything like this. Good learning curve though, wasn't aware of Seasonic PSUs until now.

I'm gonna be upgrading my build from this event, so if I can get someone to look through what I have to see if anything is salvageable I might be able to recover at least something.

 

[Aeacus]

About PSUs
EVGA GQ is made by FSP and that too is mediocre quality PSU. TH did a review of that unit as well,
link: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/evga-gq-series-750w-psu,4396.html

Some of the cons of that unit is out of spec ripple on minor rails and very noisy (2200 RPM) fan in it.

Wattage wise and if you run single GPU, then there is no need to get any higher wattage PSU than 650W unit. Going with 750W or higher PSU results you paying more for a PSU that isn't utilized properly, and in turn, PSU efficiency also drops since load on PSU isn't in the sweet spot of 50% - 80% of PSU's max wattage.

That being said, for a proper PSU, i suggest you look towards 600W range Seasonic units, e.g: Focus+ 650 (80+ Gold), Focus+ 650 (80+ Platinum), PRIME Ultra 650 (80+ Gold) or PRIME Ultra 650 (80+ Titanium),
pcpp: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/WrNypg,yc38TW,7MfmP6,fnjJ7P/

Warranty wise:
Focus+: 10 years
PRIME: 12 years (includes all PRIME models: regular, Ultra, Fanless, SnowSilent, AirTouch)

Note: Seasonic PRIME 80+ Titanium series PSUs (including PRIME Ultra 80+ Titanium) are the best PSUs money can buy at current date and with it, you'll get the highest efficiency (94%), tightest voltage regulation (0.5%), longest hold-up time (30ms), lowest ripple noise (20mV) and longest warranty (12 years) there is. Fully modular cables and toggle-able Premium Hybrid fan control too.
No other OEM/brand offers more than 10 years of warranty for their PSUs, e.g best of EVGA (Supernova T2 series) or Corsair (AXi series) come only with 10 years of warranty.

Some reviews as well;
Focus+ 650 (80+ Gold), link: https://pcper.com/2017/07/seasonic-focus-plus-gold-fx-650w-psu-review/
Focus+ 750 (80+ Platinum), link: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seasonic-focus-plus-platinum-750-psu,5556.html
PRIME 650 (80+ Titanium), link: https://pcper.com/2017/01/seasonic-prime-titanium-series-power-supplies/

All 3x of my PCs are also powered by Seasonic, full specs with pics in my sig, where i have:
Skylake - Seasonic PRIME 650 (80+ Titanium)
Haswell - Seasonic M12II-850 EVO (80+ Bronze)
AMD - Seasonic Focus+ 550 (80+ Platinum)

About paperclip test
As far as PSU paperclip test goes, that trick is getting faded out since modern PSUs have semi-passive fan in them, meaning that on low loads, PSU fan doesn't turn at all. This feature is good in many ways, e.g no noise output on low loads, longer lifespan for the fan and no dust intake into the PSU as well.
However, what paperclip test does, is to power on the PSU without putting any load on the PSU itself. E.g if you were to paperclip Seasonic PRIME series unit, the fan wouldn't turn at all due to the semi-passive fan. And with the obsolete knowledge of fan must turn, you'd be scrapping perfectly fine PSU.

Collateral damage
When PSU goes sky high then MoBo is usually 1st to go. So, minimum, you'd be looking towards new MoBo. At maximum, you'd be looking towards everything, except the PC case. Though, usually storage drives and case fans survive the PSU going sky high. RAM and CPU are also known to survive that. But without 2nd test PC to test out all the components, it's impossible for us to say which components survived and which didn't.

 

[jason201]

My opinion, if you're sure completely sure the "tsss sound" is coming from your new PSU, then it's entirely possible it's DOA (of course you wouldn't typically expect a brand new PSU to have problems, but it can definitely happen!). That said, your overall description is not entirely clear. What exactly happens when you try to power it up with your old (Corsair) PSU?

 

[KaptainCharles]

My opinion, if you're sure completely sure the "tsss sound" is coming from your new PSU, then it's entirely possible it's DOA (of course you wouldn't typically expect a brand new PSU to have problems, but it can definitely happen!). That said, your overall description is not entirely clear. What exactly happens when you try to power it up with your old (Corsair) PSU?

I firmly believe that is 100% gone. I had the same issue as with new PSU but after a shutdown to retry power wasn't going to the gpu whatsoever from the psu, so I pretty much wrote off the Corsair one.

 

[KaptainCharles]

Hey just an update if anyone finds this on google having the same issue as me.

Got a new mobo, CPU and RAM as I had to upgrade anyway. That and the PSU were all working so I knew I was guaranteed for those to work. My HDD, SSD and GPU were / are okay, even after I said IDGAF and vacuumed the outside of them to remove dust (worried later I ruined em.

Again I'd never smelled any burned stuff or anything odd.

At minimum because it wasn't getting the chance to boot my mobo is dead. However at some point I'm going to get it checked out or test it myself to see if the CPU lives and the RAM lives.

So in short, my advice is if this happens to someone and they get a new PSU but you still can't boot, check connections. If it's not that your mobo most likely went.