[SOLVED] No post but motherboard is getting power

[Tyler Paul_1]

System specs
Cpu amd Athlon x4 880k
Motherboard gigabyte f2a78m
Ram 1x8gb
Power supply 500w
120gb ssd and 1tb hdd
Rx 460

Hello everyone I’ve got an issue with a pc that was given to me to inspect and fix. The client tells me he was playing cs go when his pc completely turned off and refused to turn back on.
Upon receiving the pc I saw that the pc was getting powered due to a keyboard and mouse lighting up so I’m fairly certain the motherboard and power supply aren’t at fault.

Another thing to mention is that the client bought the pc from Fierce Pc a popular brand of computer manufacturers in the UK and chose to have the pc overclocked by them. After this I was fairly certain the cpu was the fault as the system was very dusty and the motherboard had 8 pin EPS but the power supply that was used only had four. I have ordered a new cpu to go into the build. I’m just wanting to know what you think the problem may have been. Just to confirm I have removed the motherboard from its case and reinstalled it reseated the cpu and still nothing.
In my opinion I still believe it is the cpu because the motherboard is still getting power and usbs as far as I know are functional as it is making a mouse light up as well as this the pc stopped working while under stress which could be a result of the cpu just dying.

Let me know what you think as I would be glad to hear of other theories

Edit my phone autocorrect a motherboards name

 

[Darkbreeze]

If you fix PCs for a living, this should be a no brainer. I'm calling BS. If you still want to fix it, then I'd suggest you test the power supply with a multimeter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac7YMUcMjbw


And if the unit tests ok then bench test the whole works.

Beginners guide to bench testing your motherboard​

But it's pretty clear you don't fix computers for a living or you wouldn't be here to ask these most basic of questions regarding the power supply. Furthermore, you'd have almost certainly have listed the EXACT model of the power supply, as any tech would know that was of the utmost importance when trying to determine how probable it was that the PSU was to blame.

The fact that the PSU has no 8 pin EPS connector tells me that it is either very old, or very crappy. Neither of which makes me want to believe it is not at fault, because it probably is. Having lights means nothing. One or multiple rails on the power supply can fail without the others being affected. Having lights means nothing other than the PSU is not completely and entirely dead, it doesn't mean it's any good or can support the hardware.

If you want a full on guide to determining the problem, then the bench test guide I posted a link to plus the information at the following link, should help.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2583515/basic-hardware-system-troubleshooting.html

 

[Tyler Paul_1]

Firstly, never said that i do this for a living I’m 16, still in school I was just an option to the client secondly I cannot add the power supply name because it is unbranded so before you bring your know it all attitude to my post think about things. I will be able to test the psu tomorrow to tell you whether it was that or not.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So you don't do this for a living, but you have "clients". That's unusual, but ok. Those are still the steps needed to begin figuring out where the problem is at. It should pretty well get you in the ballpark, but if the system simply died during the middle of a session then I'd look at, in order of probability, the PSU, then motherboard, then graphics card and lastly the CPU. CPU failure is incredibly rare unless you've actually DONE something physically to damage it, like bending pins on the CPU/Motherboard, dropping it from a decent height or ran it overclocked with a death voltage setting for a period of time, or something has shorted out the system.

 

[Tyler Paul_1]

Well as mentioned in the post the system builders over locked the system with a stock cooler and with only a 4 pin eps as well as this you mentioned the power supply sounded “crappy” so that obviously can’t be a great combination. What I actually do is build systems and sell them so I’m quite knowledgeable when it comes to troubleshooting but not someone who has studied it and knows about every single problem in depth.
I have a spare psu which I will test tomorrow and let you know if that solves it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So what is the EXACT model of the power supply?

Have you tried resetting the bios to the default settings by doing a hard reset? That would eliminate any overclocking configuration that they did.

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for five minutes. During that five minutes, press the power button on the case for 30 seconds. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

If the system will not POST after resetting the CMOS, then there is a hardware problem of some kind.