Hang before Post---Sometimes

[eternalfragment]

Trying to troubleshoot some problems for a friend (put in mobocategory as its one of the possible problems)

The friend just moved from one house to a friends house. The computer functioned properly before the move, however, once they got plugged in, some strange problems started cropping up.

The most prevalent one, is that when they boot their PC, you can hear the fans running, but no activity from the HDD, GPU, CPU, etc. It just sort of hangs before it even posts....sometimes. When it does, nothing is responsive, and you have to hard-reset the machine. If there is anything on the screen, it is frozen there.
The setup is cloned from the previous house. Same cabling, same equipment, etc etc. Just a different room in a different house.

This doesn't happen all the time however. When it was up, and stable at this new location, we did some test runs of Prime95, just to max out power draw for 10 minutes, and some separate load test on the ram. We had no problems when running the tests. Metering appeared within normal from what i was shown remotely. We didn't go longer than 10 minutes, as the tests were done in hopes of isolating the problem.
It ran fine for a solid day, and now, this morning, when we attempted to boot, it just got stuck again.
We have attempted 4 different boots so far, all resulting in the same thing. We have changed what is plugged in, and limited it to just the PC and a monitor.



The one thing we're not sure of, is whether or not the room's power is wonky (at this point, we have no way of checking the power). It was an addition to the house, and we have no way to verify that the wiring is 100% (although, i'm not sure it could cause this problem)


I'm not sure if it would be a motherboard problem causing this hang problem, or a PSU problem, not providing consistent power to the mobo, or if its the room not providing enough power to the PSU. Or... if its something different, and it is the RAM

The mobo & ram is less than 2 yrs old, (ASUS H170 PRO). PSU is a 600W supply. GPU is GTX 970 .
I dont have many more details for this, as this friend is out of state, and i cant help in person.

This friend uses their PC for their income, so this is extremely detrimental.

Any ideas, or things we can more test would be greatly appreciated!

 

[julienruc]

What I'm focusing on here is the fact the problem came from the move. It seems like you know what you're doing and don't know where the issue can come from other than the motherboard as you've suggested.

Motherboards are often the most prone to damage from shock during travels and mvoes. I think you should focus your testing on the motherboard. Buy an electrical meter that tests voltage and wattage output from electrical sockets. Stick that onto the PSU and wall outlet and see if everything makes sense from there. After that, connect the motherboard to the PSU, power it up and check if electricity is coming out from different parts of the motherboard.

If that fails, it's safe to say that he should buy a motherboard. Also worth noting that testing can go on for days. Up to your friend to figure out if it's worth risking not finding a solution for days or maybe weeks in comparison to the amount of money he could be making if he just bought a new mobo right away.

Ram sticks, CPUs and GPUs would be easier to test, maybe take them home and test them on your build and see if you're not experiencing any issues.