ASUS Vintage-PE1 will not power up.

[MidnightDistort]

I have tried using spare PSUs (one of them is a known working one) but some will only power the fans for a millisecond, got a green LED on the motherboard but it simply won't turn on, beep or anything.

I just about tried everything from a different power cord to about to find a spare switch to see if that is the problem, but would this be the case of a bad motherboard? Or is there something i may not have tried (i also checked all connections).

 

[sirstinky]

Sounds like the board. It's getting power, and the fans are spinning, but no POST. All of the old boards I've diagnosed that only do that is either because of an insufficient power supply, corrosion, a dead CPU or socket, or bad capacitor(s). CPU's rarely go bad. If it were RAM, you'd get beeps and it would boot.

Check the caps over. Look for bulges (the top silvery part will be bulged out not flat), leaks (an orange goo coming out of the top). Also look for corrosion on the board around IC's and solder joints. If it were a bad switch, it wouldn't do anything.

 

[MidnightDistort]

Yeah, that is my guess. I didn't see anything wrong with the board, capacitors look fine. It might also be possible that when the PSU went out so did the board, these PC's don't come with great PSUs so that is my first guess that a bad PSU killed the board or the board was subjected to some kind of shock. I'll try cleaning out the PC, MB and all to see if that helps any. I might take the entire thing apart and try to locate the problem on the MB. I haven't heard of any cases where the CPU goes out but even if it has a bad CPU i thought there would be some kind of operation going on but it seems that the motherboard is unable to sustain power.

 

[sirstinky]

Yeah, that is my guess. I didn't see anything wrong with the board, capacitors look fine. It might also be possible that when the PSU went out so did the board, these PC's don't come with great PSUs so that is my first guess that a bad PSU killed the board or the board was subjected to some kind of shock. I'll try cleaning out the PC, MB and all to see if that helps any. I might take the entire thing apart and try to locate the problem on the MB. I haven't heard of any cases where the CPU goes out but even if it has a bad CPU i thought there would be some kind of operation going on but it seems that the motherboard is unable to sustain power.

That's a possibility, but I think disassembly is a good start. Re-seat the CPU, RAM and see if that helps at all. If it doesn't, then take out the RAM modules and see if you get any beep codes. A fried CPU would definitely cause a no POST situation, but like you said, they are pretty durable unless they get zapped. An overloaded and shorted PS could feedback into the board despite having safeguards. Keep me posted.

 

[MidnightDistort]

Ok i'll try that method out and see what happens. Should i also remove the lithium battery and reinsert that or is that part separate from the MB main power?

 

[sirstinky]

Ok i'll try that method out and see what happens. Should i also remove the lithium battery and reinsert that or is that part separate from the MB main power?

You could try removing the CMOS battery. It's not a physical part of the MB power system, but it's important because it preserves the BIOS ROM configuration when the PS has been unplugged for a long time and keeps your time/date correct. Taking it out and leaving it out for 5-10 minutes resets the BIOS settings back to default, and I'm not sure if it will help, but it's worth a try. Replace it if it hasn't been changed in a while. You remove the CMOS batt mainly when there's a problem with a BIOS configuration that causes a no boot or blue screens, or you get a CMOS/clock error.

 

[MidnightDistort]

Ok, well none of those tricks work. The owner is going to take it back, not sure what they plan on doing with it, i offered to build them a new PC. This desktop was a refurbished model so but thanks, not quite the solution i was hoping for but oh well .