[SOLVED] Need help troubleshooting my son't computer

[Blackhawk3339]

Yesterday my youngest tried to start his computer and it didn't work. It spun up the fans, but that was it. We did a hard reboot and it started fine. Today I tried to start it up, and got the same result as yesterday - fans spun up, the USB ports got power (keyboard lit up), but that's all. No number of reboots would start it.

~I opened it up and checked connections, reseating everything.
~I looked for damaged caps, but they're all encased so I can't tell. Everything else seemed intact.
~I removed all of the RAM except for one stick. In the first slot I get the same result. In any other slot the computer doesn't respond at all.
~I removed all peripherals except for the monitor.
~I swapped in a different video card.
~I switched to a different power supply.

The only difference that any of it made was that with the original power supply the CPU fan would spin up very fast for a split second then slow to normal. With the swapped in power supply it would just start at normal speed. Neither power supply resulted in a boot.

The motherboard is a nine or ten year old MSI Big Bang x58, and I'm the second owner. The original owner said that he occasionally had issues getting it to boot, and that was five years ago.

Is it dead, or is there anything else I can try? If it's dead, I don't have an option to replace it.

 

[CountMike]

On such old MBs that had ordinary electrolytic capacitors it was a common problem with them going bad and symptoms point to it. Take a good look at tops of those capacitors, they should be an X etched at tops which should be right flat, and that bubbled up are probably dry and bad.

 

[captaincharisma]

you should remove all the ram and try one stick at a time. if one stick of ram isn't seated correctly then the computer could look like its dead