Question My PC isnt booting, is it a RAM issue or a Motherboard issue?

[Arturas Kulickis]

Hi all. I recently purchased a "retro PC" on eBay for a project of mine, mainly for its MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum board. This PC was listed as working and even had photos proving that it worked.

However I received it today and found that it doesn't boot properly. It turns on perfectly fine, runs for a bit, but before it has time to boot into Windows or even the BIOS it shuts down abruptly.
I noticed that if I let the PC sit for about 5 minutes I can get as far as the BIOS before it shuts down. But if I only let it sit for a few seconds it shuts down after a few seconds.

I've contacted the seller and they suggested it might be a RAM issue. They offered to send a few spare sticks of DDR1 RAM for me to test it with.

In the meantime, I was looking around the system for anything else that seemed off and saw that there was a capacitor bent to the side. After gently touching it to see what was wrong, I noticed that one of its legs was no longer attached to the board.
I'm no expert on circuit boards in general, so this might sound stupid, but the PC shutting off based on how discharged it is might be to do with this capacitor.

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

[woot]

A broken capacitor may prevent your system from booting, it all depends on what said capacitors function is, trying to boot a computer with a broken capacitor can have even worse consequences, i would not buy anything else from this "seller" if i was you.

 

[Arturas Kulickis]

A broken capacitor may prevent your system from booting, it all depends on what said capacitors function is, trying to boot a computer with a broken capacitor can have even worse consequences, i would not buy anything else from this "seller" if i was you.

I don’t think it’s a seller issue, as they’ve been more than happy to help with troubleshooting and have offered a refund if I can’t get the PC to work.

I just wanted to know if the symptoms I’ve been experiencing are a possible result of a loose capacitor, as I can’t find mentions of similar symptoms anywhere online.