Homebuilt PC not booting anymore

[DrScroob]

Don't know if I am posting in the right forum so apologies in advance.

I built my system about two years ago with a Pentium 4 3.00 GHz Prescott on an A-bit IC7 mobo with two Corsair 512mb sticks of PC3200 ram and an ATI 9800 XT.

Just now it has randomly frozen to the point CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't work. Rebooted the machine and was left with nothing.

No display no bios beep, hard drive doesn't spin up.

Ruled out the graphics card as was able to test that on another machine. The ram I am unsure about as have tried booting up with the sticks in different slots or with just one at a time but no effect.

I am hopeful that it isn't the processor but is there any way I can narrow it down between the that or the mobo or is there something else I haven't thought of?

Thanks to any that post!

 

[Alyarbank]

You might want to test the Power supply, you can buy a simple tester for about $15 made by antec. Or test a friends PSU in your machine. They do fail after a few years of frequent or heavy use.

 

[DrScroob]

Thanks for the quick reply Alyarbank!

Might be the power supply... I'll pick that tester up and give it a go. In the mean time could it be anything else?

 

[ms2005]

It's hard to troubleshoot without a few extra parts.

The store you bought you parts from will other troubleshoot for a very nominal fee - in Toronto usually $25.

Best way if you want to try it yourself is to start from scratch with as simple a setup as possible, take all extras off the MB - disconnect all drives, PCI cards out - just video card and min ram. See if it boots to bios - if yes add one thing at a time until it stops working.

If it comes down to MB vs CPU - 99% of the time it's the MB unless you have had a CPU fan failure.

One quick check for older MBs about the age of your's is look at all the capacitors - if the tops are bulged out - that is the cause.

 

[Alyarbank]

I would test memory next.

 

[L1_Cupid]

basically if your not gettin any Beeps from the bios on power up it can only be 1 of 3 things

1st and most probable is the PSU (also cheapest to replace)
2nd is the MOBO
3rd is the Bios chip itself has corrupted (which basically needs new mobo unless you wanna start down the road of BIOS chip replacement)

Hope this helps

 

[Wgfalcon]

remove your ram and see if you get a memory error beep at start up if not possibly bad mb or processor

 

[PopWarWigOut]

ok, i know exactly what is wrong with your computer. i've seen this happen all too many times, about 6 or 7 to be exact, and the problem is motherboard failure.
this is due to no post or bios start up, and no mobo activity, there is just power, so if u replace ur psu, and same problems presist, you will need a new mobo.
good time for an upgrade (as an excuse 😀 )
but this should solve the problem, cuz hd, mem, gpu, nad pci cards will not cause this problem. im giving it a 96% mobo problem 😀

p.s i had this happen to me about a month ago also, mobo problem 😀

 

[zjohnr]

oi've seen this happen all too many times, about 6 or 7 to be exact, and the problem is motherboard failure.

6 or 7 times!?! Wow. Either you deal with a relatively huge number of motherboards on a regular basis or that is one heck of a streak of bad luck. Or something. :?

Any pattern as to which motherboards failed? (Just curious).

-john