Advice on a new PC motherboard 'bundle' Featured

And fan?

Ive seen that behavior caused by a failed CPU fan

Probly thats all you need.

Maybe a new CPU is worth installing if its very old to get power consumption down

I think Dell still do some towers But in the main its gamers who use them and those PCs go for silly money.

You wont get a PC in a tower much less than £400

A mobo + RAM is much cheaper than that if you have the case

Then keep the case. New Mobos from £50 upwards. May need new RAM but if you have working processors you wont need that

I've had gigabyte mobos in the past and been happy with them

If I don't have a USB stick handy for an OS test, I use the DVD drive to prepare media.

It helps if you have media to use. That gives more of a reason to have the drive handy.

You can also use an enclosure on the end of a USB cable, as an alternative solution. This helps when a case has no 5.25 bays any more.

Paul

Yes, all 3 are absolutely silent.

Ah - my mistake, I read Lenovo as a laptop, didn't realise it meant desktops too.

Also if you want space for lots of *quiet* cooling...

Plus fixing and upgrading machines with standard off the shelf parts and mobo's is much easier.

One very obscure cause of this can be a faulty power button switch... Try turning it on, then disconnecting the wire to the mobo from the front panel switch. See if it stays on then.

-- Cheers,

John.

/=================================================================\ | Internode Ltd -

Indeed. I built six tower machines in 2012, and made them as future proof as possible. The only changes over the years have been a beefier graphics card in one, and more memory in two. Plus disk upgrades.

I have finally replced the motherboard in one, and parts arriving tomorrow for another two. They run Windows 10 so you can see where this is going.

They are all decent size Corsair towers.

When the PSU fires up, the mobo sends back a signal to say all is well. IIRC it pulls a line in one of the power leads low. If that line goes high the PSU will shut off. That happened to me some time back and it was a sod of a job finding out if it was a PSU, a mobo, or a cable/connector problem.

Interesting proposition. How did you diagnose?

Also, is it possible to just buy another front panel switch and fit it temporarily? That could prove/disprove.

Thanks also to John.

Cheers

Dave R

Which MoBos did you choose, and which supplier?

TIA

Dave R

T'other way round. Mobo pulls PS_ON low to say it wants power. PSU starts up. When things are stable PSU sends back PWR_GOOD. Then the mobo can fire everything up. If the mobo doesn't see PWR_GOOD it won't try and start up. Possibly the mobo then drops PS_ON so the PSU turns off.

(there's always power from 5V_STANDBY to run this logic, but only at a low current)

Thep

So if the MoBo for some reason is dropping PS_ON this would match the symptoms.

However why would the MoBo do this?

Unless it thinks the power switch has been turned off.

Cheers

Dave R

In which case replacing the MoBo wouldn't solve this. Hmmm...

Cheers

Dave R

A mid range MSI gaming board (although there is no gaming). I wanted integrated graphics and space for expansion (again). One of the B760 ones.

As John says, a stuck power button can do this. You press in the button, PC turns on. The button doesn't release so after 10/30/whatever seconds it sees that as the 'PC unresponsive; hard power off' signal and turns off again. Possibly the plastic button releases but the actual switch behind is gummed up and stays pushed in. If you keep the switch closed for longer it might do more power up/down cycles.

A variation of same is using an ATX PSU in an AT case. On AT the power switch is a rocker so it has defined on/off states. If you wire that to an ATX PSU and flip the rocker to the 'on' state it'll behave as above. For ATX rack cases which have a rocker power switch for the industrial aesthetic[1], the rocker is a momentary switch and won't latch in the 'on' position.

Theo

That doesn't describe the issue, though, if I understand you correctly.. The PC can run for days, sometimes weeks, before falling over. Then it can fall over a couple of times within an hour or so. Never within seconds/minutes of power on.

Cheers

Dave R

Thanks. It was some time back and my brain had carefully blanked out the gory details.

Years back I used to build PCs which formed part of the control system for a large scale bit of kit. Life was so much easier when you had plenty of spare parts to use in substitution fault-finding.

Not if you have a 3D printer :-)

Theo