[SOLVED] My whole PC is acting weird. Kind of an old system, I7 3770 GTX 970 MSI Z77A Motherboard etc...

[V4NI7Y]

Specs: I7 3770 CPU, MSI GTX 970 GPU, Seasonic S12III 550W PSU, MSI Z77A-G43 MOTHERBOARD, 2x4G and 2x8G Hyper X memory RAM modules.

The issue:
This started since the morning of 19th of this month (May), it was working fine on the 18th and back, when I wake up the next day and press the power button, it just clicks... nothing else.
Obviously the first thought is the PSU (I was too frustrated to even think about just reseating the rams or the CPU) so I disassemble the whole computer, test the PSU on it's own and it's working fine, (coil whine is horrible in this PSU...)
I take the board out without anything but the CPU, nothing. I reseat the CPU and test it with just the PSU and it starts working.
Well I take it just needed a cpu reseat... I put all 4 sticks of ram... nothing again. I start playing around with the sticks of ram one by one and clean the pins and all eventually everything starts working again. Then I added the GPU and everything else, it was fine, cleaned everything put everything back in the case and went on the whole day fine, today 20th I wake up again to the same issue... reseated the rams... nothing. Took everything out once again... decided to reseat the CPU again and it turned on, I put the rams in it doesn't turn on, and the story repeats itself basically... in the end I did a test, well let me shut down my PC... I couldn't power it on again, the PSU would just click, insta shut down. At this point I gave up slammed on the cooler and tidied up my desk and all, I tried to turn it on and here I am writing this on this pile of garbage.
I have absolutely no clue what it can be since 1. The board has terrible LOUD coil whine I can even hear it through my headphones. 2. The PSU also has HORRIBLE coil whine. 3. System is like 8-9 years old (mostly the CPU BOARD and GPU, but the GPU never gave me problems.

If I could I would've thrown this thing in the garbage. But it's my only rig, and I use it for everything, work, paperwork and some heavy gaming sessions.
I don't have the funds for anything new right now, have you ever had this experience? You think it's CPU? The motherboard itself? RAM?... PSU? I am inclining more towards the MOBO. But this thing is so ancient I can't find another one that's not the price of an actual new motherboard for new gen CPUs lol...

Note:I bought the Seasonic psu a year ago or so, brand new from a retail online store.
PS: The whole thing has been screeching for a while...
PSS: I live in Portugal, the used market is... yikes...

I would appreciate some opinions and what not, I am mentally preparing for the "That thing is cooked, sorry."

 

[mu_p1]

Your RAM may be at fault here. If replacing RAM doesn't work, I can't help you.

 

[DSzymborski]

It's hard to really go after this problem if nothing can be purchased. You'd need the assistance of a friend with parts of a shop that will test your individual parts for a free diagnosis.

My first suspect would be the PSU. This isn't a quality SeaSonic PSU, unfortunately, but a very basic entry-level one that they didn't even make themselves (and it's a "basic PC with no iGPU" tier PSU in the tier list housed in the Power Supplies forum) and it's not something which is recommended.

 

[V4NI7Y]

Thank you for your inputs, after this I actually stressed out the whole computer and it did perfectly fine, I shut it off and on a few times and it didn’t present any issues which is super odd, but I still tried a few things. I did try to borrow a PSU from a brother of mine but sadly it was of no success as he had sold it (was actually part of this PC once) so I had to try and do things with what I had, I had a Celeron G530 that’s compatible with this board lying around and it’s stock cooler and I decided to test the board with the celeron the stock cooler and only two sticks of ram (no GPU and 2 of my 4 drives off), and everything went flawlessly even after a whole night being off it turned on right away the next day. So right now I installed the rest of the ram and it did turn on just fine, then GPU and the rest of my drives, and so far everything has been working fine… I will keep the celeron and the stock cooler in it for a day or two and see what happens if everything goes well I’ll try and put the i7 and the cooler master cooler back on and see if it presents any issues. This whole situation is odd and I wish I had more components to test with, I do know for sure I will get rid of this PSU at some point as it’s not a good unit at all as you mentioned. While it did fantastic for a while I don’t wanna risk damage (or more damage than it already is to my other components).

 

[V4NI7Y]

So far everything been working fine, but I still managed to snag a new PSU although it's low tier (normal list) it has a pretty nice detailed review in gaming deputy dot com, the MSI MAG A650BN, It's all I could get, wish me luck lol. (The corsair CV650 was out of stock sadly but they seem pretty similar, but don't take my word for it.) Hope I didn't screw up with the PSU again lol. Thank you!

 

[critofur]

Intermittent problems caused by a defective/failing power supply can be a real headache! Is your Seasonic not still under warranty? Since it's making noise, they should replace it for you.

Have you run a RAM test where you boot off a USB flash drive?

This one is good (and free): https://www.memtest86.com/

 

[V4NI7Y]

Intermittent problems caused by a defective/failing power supply can be a real headache!

Have you run a RAM test where you boot off a USB flash drive?

This one is good (and free): https://www.memtest86.com/

It's true, been at this for 2-3 days now... I honestly cannot pinpoint the real issue yet (I really hope it's the PSU), and since the Seasonic I have is a unit to avoid, I wouldn't be surprised!

I did not, but I will right now! Will get back as soon as possible.

 

[DSzymborski]

So far everything been working fine, but I still managed to snag a new PSU although it's low tier (normal list) it has a pretty nice detailed review in gaming deputy dot com, the MSI MAG A650BN, It's all I could get, wish me luck lol. (The corsair CV650 was out of stock sadly but they seem pretty similar, but don't take my word for it.) Hope I didn't screw up with the PSU again lol. Thank you!

The MSI is likely better than the SeaSonic. Though take reviews like that one with a grain of salt when they don't test for a lot of things (since no oscilloscope).

 

[V4NI7Y]

The MSI is likely better than the SeaSonic. Though take reviews like that one with a grain of salt when they don't test for a lot of things (since no oscilloscope).

Of course, even the best of best sometimes can be a pain in the butt. But at least it is better than the one I have right now. Thank you!

 

[critofur]

Open up the Windows Event Viewer and show only "critical" - let us know what they say around the time you had crashes. Here's the first generic steps Google mentioned about how to do that:

Steps to Open Event Viewer In Microsoft Windows 10 Navigate to Start button and right-click on it. Now, select the Control Panel to open it. After that, click on System and Security to open its particular section. Select Administrative Tools from the resultant list. Next, select Event Viewer to open the Wizard. If you have any type of shutdown error, then go to Applications and Services logs. ​

 

[V4NI7Y]

Open up the Windows Event Viewer and show only "critical" - let us know what they say around the time you had crashes.

My PC never crashed that’s the odd thing it just doesn’t wanna power on sometimes, right now I was actually testing the my memory rams the whole computer has been working fine even and 3 of them passed on 3 different slots with no errors, when I got to the last slot and last ram to test, the PC didn’t wanna turn on even swapped CPUs and put a good ram on a good slot still nothing for now, waiting a little with the PSU off and see if I can get to test the last ram on that last slot… not looking bright.

 

[V4NI7Y]

I waited 15 minutes with the PSU plugged off and now it turned on with the ram on the last slot and everything… Currently testing the last ram on the last slot. I think it really is the PSU like @DSzymborski said!

 

[critofur]

Oh I do not disagree that the PSU is a likely candidate for causing your problems, but, no harm running the RAM test anyway. Over the years, bad PSUs have caused somewhat hard to diagnose problems for me multiple times - sometimes crashes, sometimes PC randomly shutting off. When the PSU is failing, you'll usually find some critical events in the Windows Event Log Viewer such as "Kernel Power 41" or something like that...

 

[V4NI7Y]

Oh I do not disagree that the PSU is a likely candidate for causing your problems, but, no harm running the RAM test anyway. Over the years, bad PSUs have caused somewhat hard to diagnose problems for me multiple times - sometimes crashes, sometimes PC randomly shutting off. When the PSU is failing, you'll usually find some critical events in the Windows Event Log Viewer such as "Kernel Power 41" or something like that...

Oh I see, exactly that’s why I followed your advice as well in testing them, I will check once I am done with this last test and see if there’s anything there I might’ve never noticed, will report back. Thank you!

 

[V4NI7Y]

Oh I do not disagree that the PSU is a likely candidate for causing your problems, but, no harm running the RAM test anyway. Over the years, bad PSUs have caused somewhat hard to diagnose problems for me multiple times - sometimes crashes, sometimes PC randomly shutting off. When the PSU is failing, you'll usually find some critical events in the Windows Event Log Viewer such as "Kernel Power 41" or something like that...

Here I am again as promised, I did not find anything in the Log Viewer, I also got the new power supply installed, and everything is working like a charm, as of now. Hopefully this fixes my issue. All the rams had no errors the tests took a whole night and I tested one in each slot to also check if slots were okay in a way, everything was perfect. Fingers crossed my motherboard is fine too. My CPU is also fine since I tested two and had the same issue when I had the old PSU. Thank you so much for the help.

 

[critofur]

Seems most likely that it was the power supply.

 

[V4NI7Y]

Seems most likely that it was the power supply.

Indeed, so far so good! Working as intended ever since I changed the PSU.