Question PC died overnight [Again]

[Richard9877]

About a month ago, my computer was working fine, i shut it down, and in the morning, it was completly dead, no life signs at all.

I tried the following:

Booting without a GPU
Booting with only one stick of RAM, and changing the RAM, putting single stick into different slots
Booting without any Hard Drives / SSD's
Booting without any USB cables attached
Reseting the CMOS battery
Replacing the CMOS battery
Replacing the main PSU cable
Plugging in the PC to a different outlet
Jumpstarting the PC with a screwdriver
Checking all the wires and re-plugging them just in case

And still nothing, the only weird thing was that my Keyboard's RGB lights were on at all times, which is weird, because they are always off, until the pc is turned on, but now, they were on 24/7 so long as i didin't turn off the PSU itself.

I kept trying to turn on the pc every few days, and nothing. A week passed, and i noticed the keyboard's RGB's are off, so i thought i'll try turning on the PC, and it booted. It worked perfectly, games ran just like they used to, it just magically fixed itself after a week of being dead. Tried doing some troubleshooting to find out why it was dead, but everything seemed normal, couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.

It kept working for about a month, until yesterday, once again, i turned it off, went to sleep, woke up, i press the power button, and it's completly dead, and after pressing the power button multiple times, just like last time, the keyboard RGB's lit up, and now they're on 24/7 again. Any advice appreciated. Just to clarify absolutely nothing happens when i press the power button, no fans spinning, no movement, no attempt to boot at all, just completely nothing. Except like i say the keyboard RGB's turn on the second i turn on the PSU, which shouldn't happen until the pc is booted, and pressing the power button yields aboslutely nothing.

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33
CPU: Intel I5-4590
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1050 TI 4GB
PSU: DeepCool DE500 v2 350w
RAM: 2x8GB DDR3 1600MHz

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey there,

What PSU is driving the system?

When you reset the CMOS, what exactly did you do? Did you take out the battery and short two pins?

 

[rcald2000]

Hello Richard. Have you considered trying another power supply? I assume your DeepCool DE500 v2 350w is an ATX PSU, therefore I would imagine that it would be a simple matter for you to find a suitable replacement.

Question: Do you have someone that you can borrow a power supply from, for testing purposes?

 

[logainofhades]

I would probably venture to guess it is that low quality PSU, but all of that system is fairly old at this point, so that motherboard is another likely candidate for your problems.

 

[Richard9877]

Hey there,

What PSU is driving the system?

When you reset the CMOS, what exactly did you do? Did you take out the battery and short two pins?

Hello, sorry for the late reply

The PSU is DeepCool DE500 v2 350w

The problem fixed itself again yesterday, i tried booting it and it turned on. I turned it off & on multiple times, and all is well. But if it happened two times, it will probably happen a third time too, is there any troubleshooting i can do with the pc working so i can identify the culprit?

 

[Richard9877]

Hello Richard. Have you considered trying another power supply? I assume your DeepCool DE500 v2 350w is an ATX PSU, therefore I would imagine that it would be a simple matter for you to find a suitable replacement.

Question: Do you have someone that you can borrow a power supply from, for testing purposes?

Hello, sorry for the late reply

The problem fixed itself again yesterday, i tried booting it and it turned on. I turned it off & on multiple times, and all is well. But if it happened two times, it will probably happen a third time too. I was considering replacing it, but my money is a bit tight, so i wanted to know if there is a way to narrow it down if it's the PSU or the Motherboard. Even though the used ones are cheap, i would hate to buy a PSU to find out it's the motherboard is at fault or vice versa. Are there any possible troubleshooting steps i can take to identify the issue now that the PC is actually running?

I can add that i noticed the CPU usage is very, very high. Opening Chrome, or any game, puts it instantly at a 100% continiously and none of my programs / games are running smoothly like they used to before.

 

[Richard9877]

I would probably venture to guess it is that low quality PSU, but all of that system is fairly old at this point, so that motherboard is another likely candidate for your problems.

Hello, sorry for the late reply

The system is definitely outdated and old, and i'm saving up to upgrade, which will take a few months as my income is fairly low, so i'm trying to narrow down the suspect, so i can replace the part that's 100% causing the issue, so i can at least use the PC in some capacity until i can afford to upgrade

I mentioned in my previous replies, that the PC, again, somehow booted up again, and is working fine, but if there are any ways to identify the culprit now that the PC is working, it would be appreciated As a note, i noticed my CPU is constantly spiking at a 100% if i try to launch anything, Chrome, games, programs, the whole PC is just freezing up attempting to do basic tasks.

 

[rcald2000]

High CPU utilization doesn't surprise or concern me in your case: I5-4590 is old. We run those in my office, and Windows 10 updates saturate all four cores; those CPU's have no hyperthreading. With those hard reboots, I wouldn't be surprised if Windows had to run a slew of checks on data integrity. Question: Are you running a hard drive or SSD in that rig? If hard drive, then there is no wonder your CPU utilization is sky high while running all of those checks.

Were in my computer, I would test it with a borrowed power supply to see if that problem persists. But honestly, I don't take chances with power supplies that I can't trust. There is no way that I would troubleshoot further without replacing that PSU and seeing if the problem persists. And even if the problems continue afterwards, it's very possible that the power supply is slowly killing your board. Just my two cents...