BJH

Ahh interesting, never knew they did that. Explains the discolouration on my GPU back-plate. There are heat-sinks on my motherboard in those locations, so would make sense. Back to pointing fingers at the PSU then!

Doesn't seem to be. No signs of water which is good. Yeah it had really good reviews so hopefully it has done its job. Unless it is the PSU that has gone itself lol.

That is reassuring. Thanks for all the advice, appreciate it.

I've just looked on the back, and there are like smudge looking marks in places near the CPU, but I'm not sure if that is like fingerprints or something that I have never noticed? I will attach a photo so you can see. Does not sound promising though. No smell of burning however.

And if this is the case and I try a new psu with my mobo, could that not cause further damage? Sorry to keep asking all these questions, I'm just worried about causing more damage. But I will get a PSU sorted.

This is without the GPU being plugged in though. The flickering and artifacting is with my integrated graphics which is why I'm concerned it has done more damage. Currently my PC will not boot at all with the GPU plugged in lol.

Thanks for the advice guys, I think I will try and get an old PSU off of a friend and start there. Really hesitant to put my GPU in someone elses PC, as it will be costly enough if my GPU is gone lol. I still don't understand the issues I am having without the GPU plugged in? Do you think the screen flickering and power button being unresponsive could also be a PSU issue? Think it could be possible my mobo is faulty as well as a result?

Right, gotcha. If my GPU is dead, would that likely cause that to happen? And is there a chance of damaging my friend's PC if I put my potentially faulty GPU in it and boot? Or vice versa if I try a new GPU in my machine when the PSU may be faulty?

That's a good point actually thanks, forgot to mention. There is a click sound, but no sign of life at all (not even the power LED).

Hi all, I'm looking for some advice as I am unsure where to begin with troubleshooting my PC parts further. Hopefully you guys can help me out. My issue is a strange one, as it seems to have developed into further issues potentially which is annoying. My parts list is here: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/xZwKZR Apologies in advance for the lengthy post, but essentially what happened was whilst gaming, my GPU fans suddenly went crazy and I assume were maxed out, and both of my screens just went black and showed as out of signal. I was not playing a stressful game either (CSGO). I rebooted my PC as I could not do anything like tab out etc, but I could still hear my friends on Discord so it didn't blue screen. It rebooted fine, and after like 2 minutes of relaunching the game, the screens went black again (no crazy fans this time). After rebooting AGAIN, I launch the game again and this time my whole PC just switches off as if I had turned it off at the wall - the LED's went out, no fans spinning or anything. I then could not turn on my PC at all, even after turning it off at the wall and back on. I assumed it would be either a GPU or PSU issue, so I removed the GPU and the PC booted again. The issue however is even without the GPU in, although the PC boots, my screens keep going black intermittently and saying out of range as if they have been unplugged. When this happens, my power buttons also become unresponsive, meaning I cannot turn my PC off by holding down the power or pressing the reset button (that usually instantly cuts power and restarts). These buttons literally do nothing. Which made me think it may be a MOBO issue, however my friend suggests CPU? It is for sure not the monitors, I have tried multiple monitors, cables and plug sockets. So the issue is for sure with the PC. Could it simply be that the PSU is failing hence why it cannot boot with the GPU in? But how does this explain the issues I am still having without it. And on top of this, I ran Prime95 stress test for hours and other than the screen flickering, the PC did not crash. The flickering even happens in the BIOS however, which confuses me even more. What would be the best cause of action here? I believe parts are under warranty, but which ones will likely be the cause? I was going to test the GPU in a friend's PC, but am worried this could fry his PC too if it is faulty? Or is this not the case. I also considered just buying a new PSU and trying that, but to me it seems more like a MOBO issue due to the crashes that are still occurring, unless more than one part has been damaged from all this. Sorry for the long post but it is not a usual issue so needed the explanation. Thanks in advance for any replies and advice. Brandon.

Thanks for the suggestion I had read that somewhere online already and gave it a try but no luck. Like I say I reinstalled windows too, and tried ubuntu and the problem is there. So I imagine it's either a hardware or BIOS issue, I'm just not sure

Yeah it's different on different games, no worries.

I'm guessing you have V-Sync enabled in the options. If the game has a double buffered option enabling that would lock the game at 30fps I believe. Try disabling those options.

Hi everyone, I'm having an issue with my brother's laptop and I'm hoping you guys can help me figure out what is wrong, because I am running out of ideas. The laptop is a packard bell tm83, which came pre-installed with Windows 7. The laptop came with 4GB of RAM, and has worked as expected over the past few years with all of the RAM being usable. Recently, my brother tells me the laptop was smashed quite hard (on the keyboard) and ever since it has been slow. I said I would have a look for him, and have figured out that the reason it is running so poorly is because task manager now shows only 1.7GB of RAM being available to use. I assumed this was because of the laptop being smashed, guessing that either the RAM stick or slot had been damaged. The weird part however is that it still shows there being 4GB of RAM available in resource monitor, but it says that the other 2.3GB is "hardware reserved" and therfore cannot be used. The BIOS is also showing there being 4GB of RAM installed, which is why I am confused as to what is happening. I tried testing both sticks of RAM one at a time in the laptop, and both worked fine in the first RAM slot, booting as normal. In the second RAM slot however, the computer fails to boot. This led me to believe that that slot was broken, but why is it still detecting the second stick, both in the BIOS and in windows? Does the laptop need to have the first RAM slot filled to boot maybe? Since the RAM is being detected, I thought it would maybe be down to the operating system changing how much of the RAM is available. I tried a number of different fixes, and none seemed to work so I completely did a fresh install of Windows (factory reset), yet the problem persists. I even booted to ubuntu from a USB stick, and again it only shows 1.7GB. I then thought it could be a BIOS setting, maybe setting a limit for the RAM, or assigning it as VRAM, but the BIOS has very limited options that you can change. Even flashing to the latest BIOS did not help. So I am truly out of ideas. If you guys can shed some light on this I would greatly appreciate it. Is it possible for the smash to have damaged the RAM in such a way that it is detected but unusable? Or the RAM slot? Or would that not make any sense at all. Thanks in advance for the help.

Thanks for the links, I had seen the first one already but have just looked into the second one now. Still no fix i'm afraid! I seem to have narrowed it down to it being a fault with Windows which does not like different refresh rates running together. Issue is that I still haven't seen a fix for this, and from what I have read there isn't one, it would need to be fixed by the OS. The only other thing I can think of is that NVIDIA could somehow make a workaround for this, but that I am unsure. It's a shame really.