My PC won't turn on

[Ilija Radojkovic]

Hello, today my grandfather was doing something with a meat grinder on three-phase current, after a few minutes of working, it suddenly shorted out, i've heard poof and safe-switch turned power off. The only thing that was on when that happened was my PC. Now, it won't turn on. At first, it didnt show any signs when i press the power button, then after a few minutes it started spinning fans, but still nothing. I've noticed that CPU fan is going really slow, I have AMD fan, it usually spins at 3400rpm, and GPU fan spins on max, which it usually never does, GPU used to run really cool. I thought at first that it's the PSU that got fried, but i checked safety fuse on it and it looks good. I borrowed PSU from my friend and it doesn't work either. So is it the motherboard that got fried? Is there anything i could do to fix this? I have old PC, Athlon II 250 on AM3 socket, i cannot find any mobo to buy to replace this and Phenom CPUs are way overpriced.

 

[Lutfij]

In spite of being old, there's no harm in mentioning your full system's specs. Breadboard your system and use a reliable/branded PSU of a slightly higher wattage than what you were running on.

 

[Ilija Radojkovic]

AMD Athlon II x2 250 3.0GHz
Biostar A770L3
Radeon HD5670 1GB
4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM
400W Codegen PSU

I tried to run it on 500w chieftec but still got nothing.
I did breadboarding, no beeps by the speaker, cpu fan now just trying to spin, it goes like 1cm then stops.

 

[Lutfij]

Both PSU's are expensive paper weight. Get something branded like Corsair or EVGA and then try it. If the system refuses to boot when breadboard, your prior PSU fried most probably everything. In fact if some things do end up showing signs of life, it's highly possible that the parts will eventually die over the next few months.

Motherboard is dead if there is nothing from it. Are you sure that the GPU and the fans don't move either?

 

[Ilija Radojkovic]

I'll try other PSU if I can find, but for now, these 2 are all I got.
I don't have case fans, and GPU fan spins at max speed, I've never seen it do that when it was all working, its not very powerful GPU so it was running pretty cool, no need for high rpm.
Looks like I'll need to buy new PC. I cannot find Corsair and EVGA PSUs in local stores, except those 10e PSUs, Thermaltake, Cooler Master and Raidmax are all we got, what's your opinion on those 3 brands?

 

[Lutfij]

All company's have bad and good units. We need to look at each particular unit before we say it's good or bad. See if you can borrow a branded PSU from your other friends and see if the system boots up. If the GPU fans turns it mean that power is going through the motherboard and your board is showing signs of life i.e it's possibly still functioning where something else may be bad.

 

[Ilija Radojkovic]

I will try to find branded psu and test it tomorrow. Also i will search for good psu that i can buy later and keep searching for the problem.
Thank you for your time, happy holidays

 

[Enzymatic]

- Unplug your power cord from the potentially faulty PSU. You can also unplug the 24-pin and 12V from your mobo. Hold your case on switch down for 30 secs. (At this point you can just have the PSU power switch set to on while it's unplugged, doesn't really matter).

- Remove your CMOS battery from your mobo for like 2-3 hours while your PSU is unplugged. (You want any remaining power in the system to drain also). If you want to be even more patient wait 4-5 hours or even over night with everything unplugged.

- After several hours put the CMOS battery back in, then put the plug into your PSU, and try to power on your PC.

After all that, if you get nothing and it doesn't post after a few attempts, chances are your PSU is done for, or your mobo is done for (in which case I would then go out and buy a new PSU, and eliminate potential problems one at a time)... OR, if you have access to a PSU you know 100℅ works, throw that into your system, and if it doesn't power on then you obviously know your PSU isn't the issue. Try those steps before going out and buying yourself a flashy new PSU or mobo though.. in a lot of cases the comp will fire up np. (No pun intended).

One more thing to note.. even if this trick does work and your comp fires up, it does not necessarily mean your PSU or mobo are not faulty.