Question My 10-year old PC won't boot ?

Ancipital

Distinguished
Jan 6, 2015
20
0
18,510
Hi.
Some weeks ago, my beloved 10 years old PC went belly up 😥.

When I press the power button, the video card cooler start spinning, but I hear no POST beep and I see no image on the screen.
The CPU gets mildly warm, but it might overheat if let running more than a few minutes without radiator so I let the radiator on it (no fan).
There is no chip overheating - I "fingered" all of them :), I looked also through a cheap thermal camera.
Not a single LED lights up.

Power supply
I measured the power on all pins. It is all fine except the negative 12V rail, which is 11.18V (but this is still well within its 10% margin).
At least the main board answers to the power button. I can start the computer, and if I keep the power btn pressed for 4 seconds, it also turns off the power supply PC.
The pin 8 (PowerGood) is +4.1V - I don't know if this is its good value...

BIOS/CMOS
Trying to clear CMOS, also nothing. The second BIOS won't kick in.
I heard there is a trick you could force the backup BIOS chip kick in. Something like keeping the reset and pwr buttons pressed for 10 seconds while turning on the power supply.

Any ideas? Any hints?
Please help a sad guy....
 

Ancipital

Distinguished
Jan 6, 2015
20
0
18,510
full system spec? include brand and model of the psu

The system is (was):
GA-990FXA-UD3 (rev. 3.0) DualBios https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-990FXA-UD3-rev-30/support#support-dl-bios
AMD FX-8350 4GHz
32GB RAM
PSU Antec 750W
All capacitors are ok. None look swollen.
__
I tried to force the backup BIOS to kick in:
Keeping the reset and pwr buttons pressed for 10 seconds while turning on the power supply.
Keeping the power btn pressed to 10 seconds.
Keeping the power btn pressed while turning on the power supply and then imediatelly shutting it down.
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
But all voltages are there. I measured them one by one.

That's not how it works. You're measuring with no load on it. Those PSU testers can only verify basic functionality. The cheapest garbage can get within the +12V ATX spec with nothing running on it. There's a good reason proper load testers costs in the thousands while you can get a PSU tester or a multimeter for $15.

We still don't know if your PSU is working or even what your PSU is. Without this information, there's nowhere farther to go.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Phillip Corcoran