Serious system failure - keeps powering off

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Mar 7, 2005
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I've had my system a little over a year and everything has been going great. I was just playing COD4 when the systems power failed, I first thought it was a loose power connection or a faulty power cable but it looks like something more serious. It will power on and post for a few seconds but before it gets to the vista loading screen the power fails again. I opened my case and had a look around to make sure all the cables were in the right place and nothing had wondered inside and I couldn't see any problems. So I closed it up and tried again. This time it made a long high pitched screeching sound so I imediately unplugged it from the wall and now i'm scared to even try again. Any ideads what it could be.

Here are my system specs

- Core 2 Extreme QX6700
- Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme heatsink
- SLi Point of View GeForce 8800GTX
- OCZ Platinum 4gb PC2-6400, 4x 1gb
- Abit IN9 32X-MAX nfocre 680i
- NZXT Lexa Case
- OCZ GameXStream 1010w PSU
- WD Raptor 74GB (x2 RAID 0)
- WD Caviar 500GB (x2 RAID 1)
- Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
- Vista Home Premium 64-bit
 
the squeal is a failing capacitor, go to radio shack or order a power supply tester (radio shack carries the thermaltake one) and it'll tell you whats going on. tester is usually 10 bucks ish
 
The long high pitched screech could be one or both of your GPUS complaining about lack of auxilliary power. Either a connector is loose and reseating everything might help, or your PSU has failed. Get that tester and see what it reports.
 
I have plugged in my other power supply (an OZC 850w psu) and it fails to even post now. All the lights come on for a couple of seconds and then go off again. 🙁
 
I got windows to boot. When I had both gfx cards installed I could not see the post code display. Now that I have one card removed I could see the display was indicating there was a problem with the cpu fan. I reconnected the fans and it now boots up. I'm going to attempt to plug my other psu back in and hope this is the only cause of my trouble.
 
It sounds to me that there is a serious short circuit somewhere in your system. The power supplies that you have mentioned should both be overkill for your system. Do you have a spare GPU to test with?

I'd recommend tearing the whole build down, MB and all, outside of the case, then start adding components one at a time until you again get the failure.

If it won't boot at all after stripping out all of the un-neccessary components, then I'd be calling Abit support....



 


This is true. I see that you got it to post though now, that's good lets hope it last.
 
It's back up and running. It turned out not to be a serious issue. I have an ultra-120 extreme heatsink with two fans attached and a Zalman 6 fan speed controller. The main cpu fan power cable has a connector coming off which is plugged into the mb so it can monitor the fans speed. A few days ago one of the elastic bands holding the fans to the heatsink broke and I had to replace it. I must not have firmly connected the fans power cable securly to the mb and it came loose, but the fan stayed on due to it being connected to the zalman speed controller. The mb shut down my pc to protect my cpu from overheating, although it has a temperature monitor so i don't see why. As I had two gfx cards installed I could not see the post code display on my mb. Once I removed one due to swapping psu I could see a post code indicating a problem with the main cpu fan and then I was able to solve the problem.

I'm so relieved it wasn't a serious problem and thanks for all the suggestions they were a great help.
 
A few days ago one of the elastic bands holding the fans to the heatsink broke and I had to replace it.
Click to expand...
Ehhh...your useing -rubber bands- to hold the fan(s) on the CPU HS?!
Why are you not useing the -clips- that come with the HS and why bother with more than one fan?
Useing more than one fan does not give more/better airflow and in fact can -raise- overall temps due to airflow obstruction.

The seven systems in my profile (my LAN) never go over 4C above room air temp and have 1 HS,1 intake,1 exit (and one small top blow hole). Basicly the fans are inline...cold air comes in accross regulators/CPU/RAM and right into the exit fan and all 7 systems have a 50% OC.
 
I was half tempted to use a tie down on my damn extreme they are hard as hell to get clipped down just right because of the damn clip having to go around the top of the pipes.
 
I couldn't get the clip used to hold the heatsink fan to work. I think the fan I used was incompatible. I had two fans spare so I decided to stick both of them on there. It keeps it about 1C lower with two fans.
 
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