Pc only works if heated up

[steve the biker]

hello guys and gals,

after a few days away during the cold spell before xmas my pc would not stay on for more than a few seconds.. i suspected dampness, so put a fan heater to it for a while, which worked..

however it has been a couple of months now and it is still only staying on if i keep it all nice and hot with the fan heater.. any dampness would be long gone so it must be something else

it functions normally as long as i keep it hot enough, if i don't it just shuts down without any notice

has anyone had this problem and what was the outcome..

 

[RobertSolman]

i would check each component and try and find which one or ones are causing the problem and then try and claim them through warrenty or if you cant you may have to purchase new ones. thats all you can do to fix it once you have found the problem component post back here and we can help you better if we know exactly is wrong. hope i helped

 

[steve the biker]

THANKS

it is all a couple of years old, so no warranty

i was hoping to avoid going through the process of elimination in case i make it worse.. as i am not in a position to go buying new bits and starting again from scratch..

because the machine starts up ok if heated but will shut down if the temp is allowed back down to room temp i wondered if this was such an odd problem it would be readily identified by someone.. the only things i can think of are a broken or dry joint/ connection that the heat expands to make work or a sensor that is gone wrong, but most are for over-heat.. aren't they.. ?

i know i will probably need to go through the process of trying new psu, checking connections etc. unless someone has had this and can save me the hassle..???

 

[clarkjd]

You might try just re-seating everything...But you will need new thermal compound to re-seat your CPU.

 

[steve the biker]

have jiggled all the connectors etc, if the problem was over heating it would be easier.. but needing to be hot (way above room temp) to start up is just plain weird .. isn't it !??

 

[clarkjd]

I meant remove and re-seat everything...Ram, cards, plugs...Because if they aren't seated correctly to begin with, just jiggling them wont help..But you are right it is just plain weird

 

[Guest]

Perhaps not so weird; things expand when they get hot, so something that was not making contact, will now make contact.

Does the machine shutdown, once the heat source has been removed? If so then something is not making contact somewhere. I would start with power supply etc first. as these are directly related to operation of the PC, and then move down the list to the peripherals (ethernet, graphics, etc)

 

[shoota]

have jiggled all the connectors etc, if the problem was over heating it would be easier.. but needing to be hot (way above room temp) to start up is just plain weird .. isn't it !??

i absolutely agree that something is not making contact until it's heated and expanded. Most likely it's a component that doesn't get hot by itself through operation. for example, video card, psu, cpu, ram. most likely it's on your motherboard somewhere, which would also make sense because it would be taking the brunt of the warm air from the fan heater (and therefore being most affected by the heat or lack of heat).

if you're in no position to spend money then you'll just have to live with it i guess. be careful with the heat though, i fried my last motherboard with a hair dryer by accident. use just enough to keep it running.