[SOLVED] Existential Advice as a former PC gamer/enthusiast

KarMaKalus

Honorable
Dec 6, 2014
4
0
10,510
This might be a long post but bear with me, maybe some of you have felt the same in the past and I can learn something here. Here I am, a senior ME student, one semester from graduating, trying to fix my beloved PC i built about 5 years ago. Im pretty sure the graphics card is dying/dead, as it started artifacting and crashing a while ago, and replacing the PSU did not fix the issue. I'm now trying to test it on just integrated graphics (GPU removed), and cant get that to work either, Ive had all sorts of bad luck in my PC building career. Now if I could have sold my entire system before it started having all these problems I definitely would have, and I would rather sell it for a good chunk of money and build another PC in 5 years maybe when the GPU market is more normal. So what im left with is frustration about a PC that doesnt work, struggling with little motivation to actually try to fix it. Ask me questions about my sitch if you feel like helping. Thanks all
 
Solution
Breadboard the components onto a table, use the motherboard box to lay it on. Build the system up with only one stick of the OLOy (alternately the single unmatched stick), connected to the PSU and a cooler installed. Power up the system using the 'short the pins' method and see if the system will POST. With no drive connected you should expect it to throw a no boot device message.

If it won't POST swap around that single stick of RAM to try again.
I didn't read to see if that mobo has lights or a speaker to throw codes. In the case that it isn't booting utilize that tool to see if it's showing where the issue is.
In the case that it does, use another working and virus free computer to download the USB bootable Windows 10 install...

KarMaKalus

Honorable
Dec 6, 2014
4
0
10,510
Before PSU: Corsair 550M, After: EVGA 650
CPU: i7 7700k
GPU: Gtx1070
Ram: 4gb Dominator Platinum + 16gb OLOy ram, total of 20gb
Motherboard: AsRock mini ITX (H270m)
Storage: various SSDs and one 1tb hard drive
 

punkncat

Champion
Ambassador
Breadboard the components onto a table, use the motherboard box to lay it on. Build the system up with only one stick of the OLOy (alternately the single unmatched stick), connected to the PSU and a cooler installed. Power up the system using the 'short the pins' method and see if the system will POST. With no drive connected you should expect it to throw a no boot device message.

If it won't POST swap around that single stick of RAM to try again.
I didn't read to see if that mobo has lights or a speaker to throw codes. In the case that it isn't booting utilize that tool to see if it's showing where the issue is.
In the case that it does, use another working and virus free computer to download the USB bootable Windows 10 install. Install one of your drives, the one you intend OS to be on. Boot back to BIOS and select the USB as the first boot order. Use that USB to then go into the advanced options and make sure that the target drive is fully clean and has no partitions. It should show as unallocated as I recall.
Once you are sure that the whole drive you are using is clean then have Windows do it's install automatically.

After that it's just a matter of putting things back and see where and if it stops working properly. If you run into an issue along the way pass it along here and someone will try to help if they can.
 
Solution
This might be a long post but bear with me, maybe some of you have felt the same in the past and I can learn something here. Here I am, a senior ME student, one semester from graduating, trying to fix my beloved PC i built about 5 years ago. Im pretty sure the graphics card is dying/dead, as it started artifacting and crashing a while ago, and replacing the PSU did not fix the issue. I'm now trying to test it on just integrated graphics (GPU removed), and cant get that to work either, Ive had all sorts of bad luck in my PC building career. Now if I could have sold my entire system before it started having all these problems I definitely would have, and I would rather sell it for a good chunk of money and build another PC in 5 years maybe when the GPU market is more normal. So what im left with is frustration about a PC that doesnt work, struggling with little motivation to actually try to fix it. Ask me questions about my sitch if you feel like helping. Thanks all
What happens when you remove the gpu and connect the monitor to the mobo?.......what do you see/hear?