tech support Potato PC shuts down weirdly, tried everything, just to fail.

[Chandrodoy]

Why does my PC keep shutting down? After 2 years of almost excellent service, my potato has started suddenly shutting down, while doing something, or even when idle. sometimes the thing restarts, but usually shuts down again. Sometimes after turning on again, or the power button lights up, fan spins, but There is no display output, and the HDD LED is not lit. If this happens, i hold the power button, shut it down, and turn it on again. I repeat this process 3-4 times, then Leave it for 20 mins, then it boots. After booting , it can act normal, shut down, or can restart at boot screen! i have award bios, and two pages are shown at startup, usually, it shuts down after showing the first page. The repair person said the mobo is fine. I have no overclocks, There are no temperature issues.

The specs:-

AMD FX-6300. 6 core, 3.5Ghz.

Onboard graphics,AMD ATI Radeon HD 3000

Gigabyte GT-78LMT ultra durable AM4 MOBO. 760g chipset.

1x4GB DDR3 288-DIMM 1600MHz RAM. (Mobo supports upto 1333Mhz)

Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD

255 W generic non 80+ psu

Stock cpu cooler.

The system is used for very basic ms word stuff, web browsing, movies and stuff. Once in a blue moon, I play retroes such as GTA SA or NFS mw, when I'm incredibly bored.on low settings.

I have tried checking connections inside, reseating RAM formatting Hdd,using different HDD, changing OS, etc. none worked. what do I do??

Pardon my English.

I know the problems and things I did are weird. This thing has been a brick for months now. Even two repair shops gave up. I'm unleashing the nerd in me again.

[Origami Cactus]

Have you tried a different PSU if possible?

[Chandrodoy]

3 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

Have you tried a different PSU if possible?

The repair guy said the psu was doin' fine! I also suspected the psu first.

[Origami Cactus]

1 minute ago, Chandrodoy said:

The repair guy said the psu was doin' fine! I also suspected the psu first.

HDD? Try CrystalDiskInfo and see what that tells you.

But other than that i would still suspect the psu, maybe your electric circuit? idk

[mariushm]

Computers usually turn off it they overheat. Check if the fans inside are still working AND the heatsinks are screwed properly to things like processor for example : you could have the heatsink loose on top of the cpu and fan spinning, but cpu overheats because heatsink doesn't actually have enough pressure to transfer heat from cpu into the heatsink.

 

Another reason is if the power is unstable - which can happen if the power supply is degraded (components inside are weakened). Check the fan and make sure the power supply doesn't overheat due to fan not spinning.

A degraded power supply may have problems starting until some chips or components inside get warmed up a bit (which can happen in those few seconds of failed start up attempts)

Also, a degraded power supply may also start to behave erratically when the computer begines to consume an amount of power above a threshold - like let's say when you get into a game, your video card starts consuming power, so when your overall power consumption goes from 50w to 100w, the power supply may have difficulties supplying 100 watts to the computer parts.

 

You can use software like HWInfo (freeware) to monitor the temperature of components and fan speeds. It may also tell you the voltages supplied by power supply, but such measurements are not reliable (it would be better to use a multimeter to measure the voltages)

 

I would encourage you to change the power supply or at least try to use another power supply for a few days and see if those crashes still occur. 

 

 

 

[Chandrodoy]

7 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Computers usually turn off it they overheat. Check if the fans inside are still working AND the heatsinks are screwed properly to things like processor for example : you could have the heatsink loose on top of the cpu and fan spinning, but cpu overheats because heatsink doesn't actually have enough pressure to transfer heat from cpu into the heatsink.

 

Another reason is if the power is unstable - which can happen if the power supply is degraded (components inside are weakened). Check the fan and make sure the power supply doesn't overheat due to fan not spinning.

A degraded power supply may have problems starting until some chips or components inside get warmed up a bit (which can happen in those few seconds of failed start up attempts)

Also, a degraded power supply may also start to behave erratically when the computer begines to consume an amount of power above a threshold - like let's say when you get into a game, your video card starts consuming power, so when your overall power consumption goes from 50w to 100w, the power supply may have difficulties supplying 100 watts to the computer parts.

 

You can use software like HWInfo to monitor the temperature of components and fan speeds. It may also tell you the voltages supplied by power supply, but such measurements are not reliable (it would be better to use a multimeter to measure the voltages)

 

No offense, but I mentioned there are no overheating issues, the computer barely turns on, fan spins, and the repair dude said the psu is fine. Atleast read the whole thing

[mariushm]

9 minutes ago, Chandrodoy said:

No offense, but I mentioned there are no overheating issues, the computer barely turns on, fan spins, and the repair dude said the psu is fine. Atleast read the whole thing

I read, but based on how you wrote the message I don't trust what you say. Did you actually put your fingers on the heatsink on the cpu, did you check the thermal paste? Is the psu fan spinning at a proper rpm?

 

How do you know the temperatures are fine... you just say they are. How would you know the temperatures when you seem to not even enter bios to see them?

 

How do you know the psu is fine, just based on how some guy said? How did that guy test the psu? Did he just measure the voltages with a multimeter? Did he test psu without computer connected to it, with computer connected to it, while you have some heavy load on the psu (playing games etc)

Did he open the psu to check the insides visually, or did he just use a gadget with some leds or a multimeter to measure voltages?

 

Here's another example where psu could be bad in a not so obvious way:

5v stand-by circuit is running 24/7 in the power supply even when computer is off.. this mean psu's fan doesn't spin and the 5v sb circuit is usually separate and is always warm, so some components in that circuit can degrade over time. It's a common point of failure in power supplies.

With the PC turned off, because there's practically nothing sucking power from the 5v stand-by circuit, the circuit will output 5v , so if your repair guy measures the voltage, he will measure 5v and think it's fine.

However, when you power on the PC and the motherboard reads the BIOS and the chipset starts doing work, that chipset is powered from the chipset... so there's some demand from the 5v stand-by circuit. That demand could be just enough to cause that circuit to fail and give let's say 4v instead of 5v and when the chipset detects this low voltage, it commands the motherboard to turn off, to protect itself.

As the 12v and 5v and 3.3v outputs are basically separate from the stand-by circuit and they work only when the psu fan also works, those circuits may degrade at a smaller degree because the components are always cooled better than the 5v standby circuit... so if your repair guy measured 12v and 5v and 3.3v and found them working well, doesn't mean all the PSU is working well.

 

If your repair dude just did some basic test on the psu, maybe he didn't catch such scenario.

[SenKa]

Your repair dude may be wrong, tbh. Here's how you can accurately test if a PSU is at fault:

 

Systematically unplug non vital components in inverse order of power consumption, so: HDD first, then GPU. If you remove the HDD and it works you either have a duff PSU or dying HDD that is pulling the 5v line down.

 

If removing both the GPU and HDD makes it boot, then install the HDD and see if it still boots. If it does, then its either a duff PSU or GPU pulling down your 12v and 5v lines.

 

If it will only boot with no GPU or HDD, then your PSU is toast.

 

A generic non 80+ PSU is always suspect, especially one used for any length of time. At that low wattage with an FX chip you may simply have been overdrawing it all this time. I would replace it just as a precaution if nothing else. My vote goes to one of the lower wattage Dark Power Pro 11.